Obligatory Legal Bit: Angel Sanctuary, it's characters, indices and related designs are property of Kaori Yuki, Hana to Yume comics, Hakusensha, old Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all. This fanfiction is not intended to infringe on the rights of any of these people, nor is it intended to be sold, hired or reproduced for profit. If anything I'm losing money on it.

Author's notes: Yes, it's the obligatory 'Angel Sanctuary does the Labyrinth' fic. Well, somebody had to do it (and this somebody doesn't much care if it's been done; there are about 45823897395 versions of the Rocky Horror show done with casts from manga and anime, so why not?). I was really enjoying my Zetsuai take on Return of the Jedi before I got bored of the series… I hope that I'll get as much out of this as I did out of the others I have done.

Warning: stupidity, terrible jokes, mad character assassination and the occasional spoiler all lie ahead. If I have reamed your favorite character, please bear this in mind: I love Rociel and the Mad Hatter, and look what I've gone and done to them! All the same, this probably isn't going to be your cup of tea if you're a big Sara fan. Many apologies too if I have left someone you really like out, though that's probably not such a bad thing.

Chapter 1

It wasn't like it took much for Setsuna to get his mom angry. Considering that one sure way for him to get his mom angry was to show up and be Setsuna at her as obviously as possible, arriving home massively late after being caught in a rainstorm and getting in yet another fight with Kira's druggy friends when mom had decided, for reasons best known only to herself, that she wanted him to babysit Sara when normally she couldn't stand to see him standing next to Sara without calling the police and trying to put a restraining order on him ('Officer! That boy is corrupting my darling child!'), was a short cut to unleashing a decorous suburban Armageddon down on the entire house.

What self-respecting juvenile delinquent had to be in by six or risk the wrath of his mom? It was laughable, that's what it was. And even if he was thrilled at the unexpected chance to get close to his beloved Sara without mom immediately starting to throw things at him, Setsuna still wished that it wasn't happening. Having to cut short a fight just because your mom wanted you home was really pretty embarrassing, as it was he'd had to deliberately cut himself to ensure that he went into an berserker rage at the sight of the blood, thus ending the fight as fast as possible. "I'm late I'm late I'm late…" he muttered to himself like a mantra, as if by the mere act of repeating himself over and over he could somehow make it not the case. Obviously, though, that wasn't going to work. His watch remained resolutely stuck at seven regardless of how much he wished it would go back an hour so that his mom could just get the hell out of the house with the minimum of fuss and leave him to enjoy an evening in with Sara. But no, obviously, he wouldn't have been Setsuna Mudou if life had decided not to constantly screw him over and all he had to look forward to in the immediate future was a massive argument. Sighing and shaking his head, he paused momentarily at the entrance to his mom's apartment building, then steeled himself. Oh well, the sooner he got this argument over with the sooner mom would leave him and Sara alone in the house with easy access to a decent bed, as well as the sofa and several other places designed to lie down on with comfort and the keys to the drinks cabinet.

"And what time do you call this?"

Mother gave Setsuna one of her patented Icy Stares of Death, but was interrupted before she could start hurling the contents of the living room at him by the sudden appearance of Sara, who had heard the voices in the hall and come to investigate. Sara was, as ever, dressed in a long flowing dress with ribbons in her equally long flowing blonde hair and looked as if she'd just come in from frolicking picturesquely in a sunlit field of clover with a small white kitten named Tibbles. Actually, she'd just walked out of her bedroom where she'd been hugging a teddy bear and staring into space, wondering why Ruri-chan was being so mean to her these days, which in a less delicate, beautiful specimen would have been sulking or pouting but in her case was probably described as pensiveness or wistfulness, but appearances could be deceptive.

"Anikichan!" Sara yelled delightedly, launching herself at then glomping onto the soaking wet Setsuna. "You're home! I was so worried!" She pulled back a little and giggled "Oh, but you're soaking! Ah, have you been fighting again? Anikichan!" Sara looked shocked and turned from her brother to her mother. "Mother, you've got to let Setsuna change his clothes before he catches his death of cold!"

Setsuna, by now practically standing in a little puddle of his own creation, gave Sara a wistful glance as she walked back into her room. Sara, for her part, turned and gave him a slight smile which cheered him up immensely for all of about two seconds before the 'how can I think such things about my sister' angst kicked in. Unfortunately for him, his mom hadn't failed to notice the glance and she glowered at him.

"Setsuna," she said crossly, "You are to behave yourself whilst I and your stepfather are out, do you understand? I don't want to come back and find that you have corrupted her whilst I was away."

Setsuna wondered, for about the twenty zillionth time, the same thing he always did every time he set eyes on Raphael, namely how his mother, a woman in, to put it politely, her prime had managed to end up marrying a tall, attractive doctor with an eye for the ladies who was also considerably younger than her. Maybe she was just very, very good at turning a blind eye to his womanizing. That was probably it. Raphael didn't believe in letting a trifling little thing like being married stop him from eyeing up (and then some) every pretty girl who took his fancy, which was only all of them. He had several very sexy clinic nurses, for a start, an attractive female head of practice and a large number of the patients were young women who didn't appear very sick; it was more like a hentai game's idea of a doctor's surgery than any surgery Setsuna had ever visited.

"Ah, dearest, are you ready?"

Maybe, Setsuna thought, Raphael had only married his mother because he wanted to be close to Sara. That was the only logical reason he could think of. Either that or opposites really did attract… or maybe he was just interested by the prospect of being someone's toyboy, if only for a bit. Setsuna suspected it was the Sara thing though and he was ravingly jealous; if Raphael even looked at his sister funny he would immediately leap to defend her honor. Holding that thought, he walked over to Sara's room and knocked on the door.

"Anikichan?" Sara sprang to open the door and peeped through the crack "Is that you?"

So, after a quick shower, a quick change of clothes, and a quick burst of Sara-induced angst later, Setsuna walked back out into the living room, where Sara was preparing the meal.

Once the meal was done and Sara had slipped into her room for a moment or two to change into a different long, flowing dress that would be more appropriate for the night time, and perhaps to do something different with her hair, Setsuna relaxed on the couch and stared at the ceiling. Gods but it was nice to get the house to himself for a bit with no mom screaming at him, and no mom screaming at Raphael for calling up his little hos on the house phone when she was in as well (since their marriage the quarterly phone bills had skyrocketed), and no mom screaming for Sara to come and help her with the chores and, well… basically, no mom, and no Ruri Saiki fluttering round the place either, though she had got a bit weird lately.

And, most importantly, he had a night without having to worry about any of that, alone with the girl of his dreams. Sara. His sister. Yes, he was a little worried about that one as well but there wasn't a lot he could do about it; he was rather fonder of his sister than he should have been and that was all there was to it. But if it hadn't been for Sara's company Setsuna would have been in a far fouler mood with his mom than he was, but any night when he got to spend extra time with Sara without anyone complaining or the presence of any third party just had to be a good one.

He wondered if Sara was done changing, or whatever it was she was actually doing yet and, if not, if he should go and peep just to be on the safe side.

"Anikichan?" Sara called from the bedroom. "Are you there?"

Setsuna was inclined to agree, it did sound a bit daft, but this was Sara, Sara for whom he would do anything, and he wasn't about to tell her she sounded crazy because he didn't want to hurt the dear girl's feelings.

"Sara," he hedged, feeling a little awkward, "nobody's watching you. Just me, and I'm only watching you because I'm looking after you."

An odd request, but one Setsuna fully intended to comply with; Sara was after all his beloved little sister for whom nothing was too big a deal, so he got up and walked from the room and into the entrance hall, where he put the door on the chain and checked it was properly locked (it was; it was the front door for heaven's sake, did Sara not realize those things locked automatically behind you after you closed them or something?), Just as he was turning from the door, he head a shriek from Sara's room, a shriek that was quickly cut off.

With a cry of "Sara!" that was probably a lot more hysterical than he had intended it to come out, he ran back to his little sister's bedroom and yanked on the door. He had to shove it a couple of times before it would open but, when it did, there was no sign of Sara save a slight dent in the bedclothes where she had been sitting.

For some reason, probably the sake of the Dramatic Atmosphere, someone had turned the lights off and opened the curtains so that they now billowed dramatically in the wind. Whoever had been in here and abducted Sara had clearly done so in such a way as to make the suddenly empty room look as spectacularly deserted as possible. Setsuna was sure that Sara hadn't had her windows open before either. Good lord, whoever had done this was a fast worker, as well as a total Drama Queen.

Maybe it was the thought about Drama Queens that clued him in.

"Okay, Rociel!" He yelled to the room at large. "What's the big idea?"

Rociel (for it was, of course, he, who else would have bothered doing all that - or, more precisely, standing round looking pretty, decorative and totally round the bend whilst someone else did all that for him - just so that they would be illuminated solely by moonlight and lightning and could have Dramatic Wind Effects inside), who had been perched on the window ledge enjoying the way the wind was dramatically disordering his hair and the cape he had decided to wear for reasons best known to himself (unfortunately Setsuna wasn't even surprised by this, the day Rociel showed up wearing something that looked even halfway normal it probably meant he was borrowing somebody else's body again), turned as if he had no idea that he would find Setsuna in his own sister's bedroom.

"Good evening, Alexiel." He said, with a small infuriating smile.

And he began examining his hands again, frowning when he discovered there was a barely perceptible chip in his nail varnish. Just as he judged Setsuna was about to leap at him and try to break his neck Rociel looked up and turned so he was facing in the opposite direction, looking at what should have been the bedroom wall. This was good timing on his part as Setsuna had just leapt at him with the intention of trying to break his neck but since he'd moved just before Setsuna could reach the spot where he had been standing the boy tripped and his own momentum tumbled him into an undignified position on what should have been Sara's bedroom carpet but turned out to be a grassy hillside. This was fortunate as if he had been in Sara's room Setsuna would have crashed into the wall and concussed himself.

Pushing himself up into a kneeling position and spitting out a mouthful of grass and dirt, Setsuna called Rociel several interesting and colorful names, then looked around him and had to stifle a small gasp. The walls of Sara's room had vanished, Tokyo had vanished, to be replaced by a gorgeous fairytale valley. In front of him was a large maze, or even a maze with ambitions, in the middle of which was an equally gorgeous, dramatic, improbable stone castle which the laws of gravity said shouldn't have been able to stand up, but the laws of fiction said could. The sky was the bright blue of early afternoon; the rain had stopped completely, there was barely a cloud visible. The ground wasn't even damp. A slight breeze disordered Setsuna's hair; Rociel, by contrast, seemed to be standing somewhere far windier going by the way the cape he had decided to wear was billowing but that was just because he was the villain and they always got personal breezes, especially when they had hairstyles like his.

"What the hell is this?" Setsuna asked, standing, momentarily too startled to remember that he was on a deserted hillside with someone he wanted to make die, a small someone, and it would have been an easy task to accomplish it. If, of course, said individual hadn't been an insanely powerful and just plain insane angel who was currently masquerading as King of the Goblins because he was bored, that was.

"The labyrinth." Rociel replied. "I think the rest is pretty self-explanatory, Alexiel."

Setsuna could bear it no more. Pausing only to rewrite the book of highly offensive epithets, he leapt towards Rociel again with the aim of, at the very least, shattering his sickening calmness - also, he noted, vaguely unusual calmness, was he drunk or had he just stolen some of Katou's drugs? As it was Rociel just grinned (that was a bit more like it, that grin; utterly maniacal), and laughed as the infuriated Setsuna pounced upon him. Once again, though, Setsuna found himself leaping at nothing; Rociel wasn't there any more; in fact he wasn't anywhere to be seen. The self-proclaimed King of the Goblins had just vanished into thin air. With nothing to arrest his fall Setsuna landed facedown on the ground, bruising knees and elbows and adding a few more interesting terms of abuse to his all-new profane dictionary.

He was going to kill Rociel. No two ways about it. He was going to kill him.

What in the hell did he mean everyone had to have a hobby? Well, maybe he was right by why would anyone in their right mind choose to have this as a-- oh, that was right, Rociel wasn't in his right mind and probably never had been, simple as that. Anyone who insisted on calling an obvious male 'sister' deserved everything they got, Setsuna reflected, getting to his feet and dusting himself off for the second time in a few minutes. This was not a good start, he reflected as he looked across the fields leading toward the edge of that improbable labyrinth.

But there was no time for this! How long had that psycho Rociel said he had? Thirteen hours… and the labyrinth itself was hardly close. He had to get Sara back! He'd just promised her that he would look after her, and the minute he left her alone (how dramatic, Rociel, you must have loved that) she had been abducted. He wouldn't let her down. He would keep that promise, no matter how hard it looked like it was going to be to do so. Still, before he could start worrying about how difficult or otherwise the labyrinth was going to be, first and foremost he had to actually get there.

"Don't worry, Sara." He muttered darkly. "I'll come and save you, then I'll make that lunatic pay."

Why oh why, Setsuna thought as he started to run towards the perimeter walls, if Rociel wanted to play this bloody stupid game, hasn't he just kidnapped Metatron or something? At least Metatron was actually about the right age for it. Maybe it wasn't as much fun to run Sevotharte ragged. No, probably not, Setsuna thought, he does that all the time anyway, he doesn't need to stick Metatron in the middle of a maze somewhere to get up Sevotharte's nose, he just has to show up and be. Then again, that's all he has to do to get up my nose… maybe he's just a twisted weirdo with an absolutely warped sense of humor. That sounded right.

Setsuna smiled grimly to himself as he ran, the grass whipping at his legs.

Chapter 2 >>

Fanfiction