Power Of Twelve - A Zodiac Story

Chapter 42: Aquarius

I awoke to the sound of thunder. At first I thought it was Pisces waking me up on purpose or to scare me awake, but then I realised I was thinking about the guy who didn't have the soul to kill a spider. So, I quickly decided to find shelter.

One problem: THERE'S NO SHELTER ON A GRIFFIN!!

"Well this is fucking fantastic," I muttered. Leo looked over and nodded sadly.

"It's gonna rain. I hate rain. I wish the rain was hot. And bright. In fact, I hope there was no such thing as rain."

"Leo?" I asked. He looked up at me. "Please shut up." He shrugged.

"Whatever. Anyways, I was just about to wake you all. Serbai's close."

"What d'you mean 'all.'"

"I mean everyones asleep except me. And you," he added after an afterthought. "Well, anyways," he said, shaking his head, "Are you gonna help me wake up the others. We don't have time to spare."

"You were up all night?"

"Yeah," he said slowly, raising an eyebrow. I had seemed pretty snappy. Mainly because I was.

"Leo, I know you want to play Leader all the time but you need to rest. In a fight, if that tiredness gets a hold, you'll be screwed. And I think we both agree, you're normally screwing them."

"In both ways," he laughed. I gave a small one myself and then we locked eyes. I moved closer to him, till we were just a hairs breadth away. His golden eyes stared into my light blue ones and we slowly moved closer to each other.

I hesitantly closed my eyes and leaned in for a kiss...

After a few seconds of not meeting his lips, I opened my eyes and saw him sitting away from me.

"What's...what's wrong?"

"I understand your concern, Aqua, but I can't sleep. Honestly, I'm not even sure I'm fit to be the leader anyways. It's been hard. As a leader, I should be contributing more, but all I'm doing is fucking around. I've not even awakened Holy Spirit yet...." He clenched his fists and looked at me with sad, golden eyes.

It was hard for me not to cry. I don't know how, but in that moment in time, I felt like I truly understood the hotshot, brash, cocky, hot-headed and let's not forget egotistical, Leo.

He wanted to do his best to help. But what he help with? Most problems were out of his control and we didn't need the place to burn to hell. Heck, even our great battle was on the water - the one place he was at his weakest.

"Leo, it's not your fault. You know, as Gemini said, everything happens for a reason..."

I crawled over to him and put an arm around him. I put my head on his shoulder and we looked at the stars.

"From that saying, I'm learning I'm not fit to be the leader. Maybe not even a true Zodiac."

This kid really was self-conscious wasn't he? Well, I think that comes with the Leo parcel and package.

"Well, it doesn't matter who's our leader. We're all a team. Let's just stare at the stars for a few minutes."

He did as we said and we stared at them for a few minutes. He then began to speak again.

"They really are beautiful tonight."

"Absolutely dazzling." He gave a brief laugh.

"Well, we can't stare at them all night long," he said, as light rain began pouring down. "I really hate the rain," he muttered as he stood up.