Suddenly, a gentle laugh wafted through the room. "No, no. I wasn't going to ask something so futile. I was going to say: Was I fair?"

"Clarify."

"Sanzo..."

"Fine."

Sanzo already knew what he was talking about. The way Hakkai had defeated Shien...his gentle voice whipping out taunt after taunt until the god's concentration was broken, a whip snapping from too much pull. Hakkai was never one for psychological warfare...exploiting on the weakness of the enemy's mind because he knew his own mind was still in shambles.

Dishonorable, to say the least. But not something Sanzo wouldn't do.

"Take out anybody in our way, Hakkai. Shien's no different from the rest."

But somehow he was. They all were. Homura, Shien, and Zenon.

"But what they wanted wasn't necessarily bad, was it? A better heaven..."

"What the hell was wrong with the first one?" Sanzo spat out.

"That is something I would like to know..."

"Well you don't know and I don't know, so stop pushing it."

Their adventures with Homura were a touchy subject for the priest. Enemies who were enemies, but not really. Otherwise, why would Goku have mourned Homura's death? Why was Sanzo content in letting Homura have the death he wanted? Their demeanor...their passion for this new heaven...and they made it feel so justified.

And they made it seem that something was truly wrong with the gods. Not just the ones forsaken by heaven, but all of them. Which meant things were wrong with everything. Sanzo worked for the gods. This entire journey was ordered by the gods. All for what? To save the world? Yes, fine. Who else? Heaven? Perhaps. And gods who couldn't give a damn what happened down here as long as Gyuumao wasn't alive to threaten that world up there.

"Maybe..." Sanzo started, startling Hakkai who expected the man not to go any further with the subject. "It was just too boring."

He smiled. "Good reasoning. Definitely your reasoning."

"Hakkai."

"Yes, Sanzo?" Hakkai replied...or thought he replied.

"Go to sleep. You're forgetting your company."

"It's only you."

"But you just called me Konzen."

Chapter 3: A Better Man

The gods save no one. I can believe it now. They don't see the blood we shed. They don't see the tears we cry. They are incapable; as are we. Doomed to live in anarchy we shake our fists to the skies and damn them down and damn them down. Share the hell and destroy the world. Make the new resurface and pray for a better reality.

I believe that I hate their heaven. And as such, I have always felt...even as a child...that heaven hated me. But what can they do to punish me? Kill my love? Murder by the thousands? Take away my humanity? They are incapable. Those were my own doings.

And so I ask nothing of them.

Man is a god in ruins. Drowned in blood and sweat. Empty of tears. And infinitely more perfect...we destroy our world over and over. Build new walls. Break them down. And we have an eternity of death and rebirth. Perfecting, unperfecting. Perfecting, and failing. That is why we aren't weak, if we aren't strong.

The gods are incapable. An eternity of passive death. An oppressive stillness. They sit and watch and rot.

That is why I died. I think. So that I could live.

***

There must be a better man for this job. Tenpou was sure there was someone more deserving. He had un-deserved himself of the honor. And if the general ever found out why, Kenren would kill him. Most definitely. Kill him, instead of embracing Tenpou in his sleep like he was doing now.

There was blood on his hands, he just knew it. After years of sorting through intelligence reports and discreetly directing every division of the Western Army in order to avoid non accidental "accidents," something like this just had to come along right under his nose.

God, he was selfish.

Kenren stirred, mumbled a few curses to himself about a meeting in the morning or something like that and pushed himself off the bed. He himself knew it was just an excuse to leave because Tenpou preferred to wake up alone. And as the general lazily picked around the room for wherever his clothes may be, his superior was staring out the window. Snow, but considering his earlier hallucinations, he didn't care.

It was just an anonymous note, for heaven's sake. A note that he found somewhere in his path saying that something bad was going to happen to Kenren Taishou's regiment at such and such time during such and such surveillance round headed by aforementioned general.

Planted, no doubt.

And if Tenpou had pulled the reins on such a routine mission, it would have been obvious to everyone from heaven to hell that he knew more about what was happening in the bureaucracy than he really should. It was just too early to do anything. Being discovered at this stage was just too dangerous for words. Anyway, it was /just/ an anonymous note. He found them all the time. None of them ever proved themselves to be real threats (Tenpou himself was on the field to see that they weren't).