Good Luck Charm

This fanfiction is no longer in alliance with the canon Gin Chi Sanctuary and Kami Pantheon projects.
my heart is a good luck charm, hold onto it
A fanfiction about Seina, Seishi and the reason why everything went horribly wrong. Story One in the Lucky series.
Check out the sequel: Lucky Strike
p r e l u d e
"Seishi is dead."
The news was bold, words that spoke measures in the land of the gods. A god could die? It had never been heard of!
And somehow, Kanjo was the only one who thought anything of it.
The messenger was Sensou, the calamity god, and as always, he said it in monotone, his voice barely betraying emotion. There was a tinge of something menacing when he said her name, a sense of suspicion, but a second later it was gone and the hall was silent.
"Oh no," twittered Shizen, her big brown eyes getting full of worry. "The dear thing! How did this happen?"
"She was, that uh-" Konton waved her talons lazily, clearly not putting thought into the action- "luck goddess, right? Or spirit. I forget which." She put her arm down and picked up another fruit. "Doesn't matter. The b*tch is dead, who cares."
Kanjo couldn't believe it.
"Are you kidding me!?" He exclaimed, unable to take it. All eyes were on him now.
"Is there something wrong, Kanjo?" rumbled Jikan.
"Of course there is! Seishi is dead!" 
"It is of course a great tragedy..." murmured the time god, his eyes mournful. "We will hold a burial for her, at the next full moon."
"I- I-" stammered Kanjo, unable to find the words he needed. 
"I would remind you to keep a check on your tongue, emotion god," warned Tengoku, and there was definitely something menacing in his eyes, a hint of bitter triumph."You are amongst the Progenitors, and it would do you well to think before you speak."
Kanjo couldn't take it. He ran out of the hall and, barely thinking, transported himself to the mortal realm.
Seishi couldn't possibly be dead, could she? She had been gaining power steadily ever since the dragons of Deux Mountain spread to her lair! Kanjo remembered her well, her hidden abode within the mountain, and the time they had... spent together. She couldn't possibly be gone.
Before he knew it, he was standing in front of the Great Butterfly Shrine.
A statue, carved of marble and jade, could be seen inside, her visage lovingly shaped out of stone. The altar in front was overflowing with jewels and fruit, and incense scented the air with the faint aroma of spice. This did not seem like the temple of a lost goddess. 
Most mortals did not know how to get to their goddess's lair, but to a god all doors are open. Kanjo found the tunnel easily, and almost unconsciously, he made his way to a great and hidden cavern.
It was beautiful. The top of the cavern glittered with crystalline stalactites, reflecting light from within. A waterfall poured down from some hidden opening and snaked around the high platform in the center. Lush plant life bloomed from every nook and cranny, each one as full and healthy as if it was midsummer. On the stone platform in the middle stood a beautiful pagoda, carved intricately with the forms of curls and whorls that manifested as the wings of an insect.
And then there were the butterflies.
They filled the air like a living jewelery box, each one shining in the light of the crystals and practically glowing. Some were tiny and gold and flocked together in a shimmering stream, others were big, lazy ones that fluttered slowly from flower to flower, their wings changing from red to blue to green and back again. It was stunning.
"Seishi!" the god called, his voice sounding tinny and flat to his ears. "Seishi, are you..."
"Kanjo, is that you?"
A dragoness stepped out of the shadows of the pagoda. Her scales glimmered like pearls and twin tassels floated by her ears. She looked up and smiled at the emotion god, who was so overwhelmed with relief that he flung himself off the ledge and straight into the goddess.
"You're not dead!" He cried.
"No, why would I be?" Seishi smiled like everything was okay, like she wasn't apparently dead, like-
"Oh, that's right! I have a present!" She turned to face the interior of the pagoda. "Girls!"
Two very young dragonets stumbled out, mewling as they went to paw at their mother's legs. One of them had feathery wings, while the other had transparent ones, shimmering slightly in the light. Kanjo couldn't quite believe what he was seeing.
"Are they..."
"This one's Koun, and this one's Karisuma." Seishi's face did not lose her grin for a second. "They hatched yesterday."
"Seishi, I..." Kanjo leaned down and held out a talon, which Koun took in her mouth with gusto.
"Take them away from here."
"...what?" Kanjo knew that Seishi could be unpredictable. Her moods shifted just like fortune itself, every ebb and current changing her outlook either unnoticeable or massively. But when he looked into her eyes, he saw nothing but good cheer.
"I'm locked up in here now!" She chirped, stroking Karisuma's feathery wings. "Tengoku has decreed that for three hundred and fifty-seven days of the year, I am to be locked away in here, unable to escape until I wither away into nothing."
A chill ran down Kanjo's spine. "Wh-"
"Apparently, I'm getting too powerful. Now, I only have a week each year to grant my followers' wishes, and eventually they'll stop believing in me altogether." And still her smile did not waver. How? "Take our daughters away from here. They will be safe with you."
"Seishi, are you sure?"
"Positive." She stroked Koun's head lovingly, then took the two dragonets in her claws and handed them to their father. "We'll see each other again, Kanjo. These will not be my only children." She kissed him on the snout, light and feather-soft, then pulled back. "Now, go!"
Bundling up his children against his chest, Kanjo took one long look at the goddess, then launched off the platform, soaring away through the tunnel with only the soft chirps of the dragonets signifying his departure.
Seishi smiled as she watched them go, then she turned tail and headed back inside the pagoda, her white scales being swallowed up by the shadow until she was gone.
 1. the children of a dead god 
"You shouldn't exist."
Seina huffed a blast of air through her nose as she watched Konton underneath her eyelids, leaning on the table. "You keep saying that."
"You and your brother should not exist!" Konton was practically screeching now, her mane fluffed up so noticeably that Seina ran a paw through hers, floofing the soft fur. "Seishi's been dead for thousands of years, and yet, you two little brats are alive!"
"Maybe you made a mistake?" Kismet hazarded a guess, fiddling with a roll of bandages in his paws. Seina hissed, sucking air through her teeth in a display of warning.
"You dare correct me?" The chaos goddess hissed, her eyes narrowing. Kismet made a soft squeak and looked away, avoiding her venomous gaze. Seina sighed.
It was that time of year again. It was the time of year where Konton remembered that their mother had died almost two thousand years ago and at the same time managed to have two children a mere eighteen of those years ago. "When Kanjo came back with those squealing menaces-" ah yes, their kami half-siblings- "I was a bit suspicious, but this! This is impossible!"
"Well, I mean..." Seina trailed off to give a thorough chomp to the wad of bubblegum in her maw. "Clearly not, because here we are, still living. At least I think. Kismet, you're the medical professional, are we alive?"
"Last time I checked."
"See, there ya go." She blew a bubble and chomped it down to keep chewing. "So it's not impossible. Can we leave now?"
"Agh!" Konton slashed a nearby vase with her claws, then glowered at them. "Fine. Get out!"
The twins obediently filed out of the room, Seina not missing the opportunity to flip off Konton's turned back, and breathed out when the door slammed shut behind them.
"Once a year. Once every f***ing year." mumbled Seina, running a paw through her mane again, which was alarmingly starting to flop to one side. She needed more hair gel.
"I think it's worth putting up with to be safe here," countered Kismet, making his way out of the counselor's quarters with a lash of his tail.
"You would think that, ya wuss. I'm so tempted to clock her one right on the jaw." Seina's bubble exploded on her snout. "The thing is, I'm not an idiot."
"You sure?" Kismet turned his head to smirk.
"Ah, shut up." She walked over to whack him on the shoulder as they went outside together. "As your sister, I'm totally allowed to kick your tail."
"I'd like to see you try."
"You know, you still haven't fought Raiu yet? That's practically a rite of passage here, bro."
"You know how I feel about fighting." Kismet scowled, looking in the direction of the cafe. "Besides, I'm a counselor. I have to set a good example."
"Yeah." mumbled Seina, watching as a dragonet ran up to her brother and begged for his help.
"Well, looks like I gotta go. See you later, sis!" 
"Don't get too..." Seina realized that it was pointless. Her brother was too far away. She sighed and turned around, looking for a friend.
Nothing. She was alone. 
"Guess I'll go patrol the borders. Again."
Seina trudged off in the direction of the forest, the sun already on its downward path.
 2. lucky moon There weren't many who knew about Seina's hut in the woods.
She had built it when she started to feel more alienated from the camp, and it had taken her a week. It was a ramshackle kind of thing, a bit scruffy and leaning to one side slightly, but it was comfortable. Sure, it wasn't her cabin, but it was the closest thing Seina had ever had to a home.
Seina had never known what a home was like. She had a cabin, but that wasn't quite a home, what with all the empty beds waiting for new siblings who might never come. Before then, she had just been on the streets, nothing more. So Seina thought that home was something that you made, maybe, a thing you put together from nothing and made into something. And that was what her hut was to her. Nothing into something. Dust into walls.
She pushed the door open, her claws resting against two chalked-on symbols. A crescent moon and a four-leafed clover. The clover was Seina's doing, but the moon was somebody else.
"Hey, lucky. Up here."
Seina huffed out a laugh and looked up. A dragoness with chromatic scales was sitting on the roof of the building, her form outlined by the sunlight filtering through the branches above.
"Oh look, I found a shiny thing," Seina gently teased as she clambered up to the roof. Seiza flicked her with her tail, but there was a faint smile playing around her maw.
"Whatcha doin down here?" the luck demikami asked when she was settled. Seiza did not immediately respond, instead looking up at the dappled light squeezing between the leaves. Seina sighed and shuffled on the roof, playing with the bracelet at her wrist.
"That question is better asked to you." Seiza finally spoke. "Why are you out here?"
Seina sighed and leaned back. "Do you ever feel like, y'know, no one wants you around? Like, if you went away one day, that they wouldn't really notice or care?"
Seiza didnt respond. Seina never expected her to.
"You're kind of just added baggage, see? It doesn't matter whether you live or die, sink or swim." Seina sat back up and looked out, out at the trees and the faint blue that teased at the ocean behind their trunks. "It's kind of liberating. Hey, I can't hurt anyone because no one cares about me! But it's also.... you can't hurt anyone, because no one cares. You want everyone to care if you leave. But they don't."
"It's probably stupid, I know. There's gotta be others who care about me." Seina looked down. "I just wish my head knew that."
Silence. A bee cheerfully buzzed around the flowers at the base of the hut, listing off when a butterfly came and interrupted them. The roof creaked.
Seiza's scales were cool and smooth, and Seina accepted them immediately, shifting so she was more comfortable on her shoulder. The two demikami sat there for a while, Seiza leaning on Seina's shoulder, soft dust motes floating through the air and insects darting around their heads. The soft light grew richer, falling like molten gold through the canopy, and it was nice.
Eventually, it was Seiza who shifted, reaching over to hold Seina's right wrist. She held up her limb, reaching with the other paw to hold a charm on Seina's charm bracelet up to the light. It was a tiny crescent moon, enameled in a glossy black, slightly scuffed at the tips.
"I care," she said quietly, her voice almost completely void of emotion except for a tinge of something the other could not recognize, and Seina felt an awed chill run down her back, making her shiver in excitement.
Then it was gone, and Seiza pulled away, sliding down to the ground and leaving Seina flushed. "Don't miss dinner," she called, and Seina watched her go through the midsummer trees.
 3. a night with the sisters 
It was late at night when Seina was woken by the sounds in her cabin.
"Wakey wakey, little sis..."
"Koun!"
"What? Oh, come on, Sumi, don't give me that look. Let me mess around with her a little! She is our baby sister,after all.
"Who's there?" Seina was upright in a matter of seconds, her claws puncturing the bedsheets. Silence reigned as she crossed her eyes to see what rested on her snout, then slowly turned to the dragoness clinging to the back of her bed.
"Is this a rubber spider on a string?"
The dragoness gave a cry of amusement. "Awh! She got us!"
Seina glowered at the two dragonesses in her room. One, sitting at the side of her possessed a somehow unquenchable hotness, with her smooth mane and feathered wings. The other had a mane chopped into a spiky Mohawk and a big grin on her face. She dropped off of Seina's bed and went to stand by her sister, still smiling.
"Koun and Karisuma. My big sisters." Seina's voice dripped with sarcasm. "To what do I owe the honor."
"We're here to tell ya about Mom."
"Koun!" Karisuma whacked her twin with her tail and resumed looking at their demikami sister. "She's right, though. This is about mom- and why she's been missing for two thousand years."
Seina's mouth went dry. "O-oh."
"Ten thousand years ago," Karisuma began, her voice rich and layered, as befitted the charisma god, "mom stole something."
Koun whistled. "And hoo boy, was it a huge thing! She got in soooo much trouble with the gods for this thing. Even Rautoningu was p*ssed."
"Yes. So, in compensation for what she had done, most of the gods elected to kill her."
"But they didn't!" cried Seina. "They didn't because I exist!"
Karisuma pierced the half-kami with a withering glare. "That's right. They ended up locking her in her home at Deux City, unknowingly locking up what she had stolen with her. She was to be held for all but one week of the year. That one week, she could grant wishes and retain her believers."
"Yeah, okay," Seina finally interrupted. "That's great, knowing that she's alive, but what does this have to do with me?"
Category:Fanfictions
Category:Fanfictions (Incomplete)
Category:Fanfictions (Fanon)
Category:Genre (Adventure)
Category:Content (Rainbow Phoenix Fangirls)