When Pride opened the doors to their living room, all of the sins quickly turned their heads to face their elder, eager to hear what this meeting was all about, and what had to be so incredibly important that they had to stop their leisure activities. Lust was a bit more annoyed than most since he had just recently turned his virtue, and had wanted to spend some fun time with her if not for the meeting that slipped him out of it.
Pride was not the oldest of the sins, they were actually all the exact same age. They were all created together so naturally, all of them had to stick together. Pride seemed the most dictator-like, so everyone did as he pleased. If they didn't follow him, everyone knew they would be faced with one of his gruesome punishments.
Though none of them had ever disobeyed, none of them wanted to find out what Pride had lurking in his bedroom. Envy claimed there was a Skin Eater in Pride's closet, a rare human-like creature with no face, that happened to eat skin like one would eat string cheese. In strips. So naturally, no one wanted to find out if that was true.
Pride threw down Sloth, who slid off his back and crashed to the ground, instantly annoyed. None of the sins noticed that Sloth was in distress. They were all too focused on Pride because they were apprehensive of what was happening, and why a meeting had to be called in such urgency.
Strange things had been happening the very second the last virtue was changed. All sins had a surge of power - but that was to be expected. They had just conquered their sworn enemy, their opposites, why wouldn't they?
However, that was the beginning of all the madness even if they didn't know it completely. That was the trigger that lashed forward and caused harm everywhere.
So here they were, about to speak of the fear that the sins had always had in the back of their minds, but never dared to speak to each other about, in fear of being downgraded by their peers.
Was their greatest strength their worst weakness?
"I'm glad we were all able to make it to this. However, it's not surprising. We all live here. We have no jobs. It'd be quite sad if one of us was absent."
No one laughed at Pride's failed attempt to make a comedy, so Pride laughed for them, an awkward windshield wipe laugh that shouldn't have come out of a beauty guru, but instead an acne-ridden preteen girl that was trying to make a chat with a crush. Pride did not have a crush.
Pride folded his arms together with a stern look, his laughter gone. He was a bit disappointed that no one liked his jokes. He surveyed the room with an authority he had held since the beginning of their existence and began to speak with no jokes intended.
"At the beginning, it was for revenge. To get our rights back. To have power." The audience of sins nodded their heads in agreement with sinister looks.
"Some of us might have even said it was to grow closer to the girls, only to smash what was left of their cutesy innocent souls, spread their insides all over the wall like a painting, rebuild them, and then provide as their one source of help." Pride clasped his hands together and smiled cheerfully. Some of the sins gave wary looks that replaced their foreboding expressions from earlier but nonetheless kept listening to Pride as he spoke on. They all felt the same way, one direction or another, blood or without.
"That is not the case now, as much as it was before we realized these girls carried much more weight than we expected, with them not even knowing." He pursed his lips. "As our plan went into effect, not much changed. We had enough knowledge after succeeding in taking them from their lives to know it wasn't best to change them all at once. But because of some very unprofessional acts by Gluttony and Envy-"
"HEY!" An exclamation came out from the two accused, giving scowls at their partner. Pride barely acknowledged them.
"Unprofessional, but with good intentions." He clarified, relaxing the two sins ever so slightly.
"That didn't stop him from beating us to near extinction and threatening to hang us by our toenails," Envy whispered to Gluttony, who nodded. "Those practices are a too old school for him anyway. Expired. He wouldn't have the courage to do that with the high standards he puts himself to." The two sins quickly looked back at Pride before he caught then not giving their full attention to him and his glory.
"But even so, things did not go according to plan. They had escaped, and we were all very worried."
"Except for myself, of course." Pride smiled smugly, getting some eye rolls that he ignored.
"But remaining the positive person I was, I thought of possibilities in this matter instead of negatives." He glided to the other side of the room, just to make sure all eyes were attached to him like eyes usually were.
"Perhaps our setbacks were our strengths at this point." His eyes gleamed with an unsettling sparkle that made the atmosphere quiver in the sins. "I thought to myself, why try to fix what was ruined when you could make something entirely new out of the debris?" Pride smiled wide, too wide, a smile that stretched past his ears and completely leaving his face.
At least, that's what Wrath saw. "Hey, why are you just explaining everything we just did over the past few weeks? We're all not stupid." Wrath had the audacity to say that as Pride jerked his head to him fiercely, slightly starting the agitable sin.
"Well," Pride started in a low tone, glaring at him, "some of us need a reminder." He popped back up and smiled at everyone again, hiding the fact he had been exposed. "Or someone just likes talking about themselves too much," Wrath added as a comment to himself, getting a few nods in agreement from a few close listeners. Fortunately for him, Pride had gone back to talking to them all and had not heard.
"And so we all decided-"
"You decided," the other six sins chorused and corrected back, sighing with blasé.
He smiled with a saucy beam that was pearly white, quite unlike the sauce he had with his food earlier. "I decided," he echoed, smiling wider, "that we find them, obviously, and convert them as we so find them. That way my- our plan would work flawlessly, just like my skin." He shut his eyes and briefly touched his face like a model would in a skin commercial. The others tried not to punch him in the face.
"Now, we wouldn't want any mishaps, would we? Imagine if the girls had all been changed at once, and something awful happened! Like an explosion of power! An overload!" Pride cupped his hands into a ball, and then blasted them apart like a bomb, making sound effects to make it more dramatic. "That would not be pleasant." He shook his head like a disappointed parent.
"But we really do have a problem," Pride said, his face turning grim. "It wouldn't have mattered how many girls were changed at one point. Two could have been changed. One hundred. One thousand." The other sins were growing concerned, especially since Pride hadn't made a comment about his beauty. What did Pride mean by a mistake?
"But now, we are faced with something worse than we imagined. Despite our ease of power, the world could not handle it. At this very moment, Zeus-" his expression turned cold, "hates us."
Unevenness danced into the room, giving mixed expressions on everybody while Pride stood unaffected. He had time to think it through unlike everyone else.
"I still don't get it," Sloth muttered, putting a hand under his chin. "You're not telling us why he's mad, you're telling us he is mad."
"Sometimes there doesn't need to be a reason," Wrath spoke darkly, slinking his eyes over to Sloth, who lightened up a bit. Wrath relaxed, but only a little bit.
"I don't know if I want to tell you that," Pride said uneasily, afraid of the reaction he was going to get. He thought if he just acted pretty, they'd buy what they were seeing, but he also knew that the sins wanted to know why he had called a meeting. In fact, Pride wasn't so sure why he had called a meeting in the first place if he didn't want to tell them at all. Perhaps he was just being prideful.
All six of their demeanours changed as soon as Pride finished the last syllable. "What do you mean, you can't tell us?" Wrath roared, gripping the seat like it was his only touch of sanity left. Pride stepped back into the wall wringing his hands, afraid this would happen. He internally cursed and reminded himself to not seem so arrogant while speaking ever again. Unfortunately, his body quickly killed that idea since his anatomy was allergic to non-arrogance.
Gluttony grabbed Wrath's hand quickly to try to calm him down. "Chip?" He said anxiously to try to chill his nerves, but Wrath wasn't persuaded. Wrath had his own ideas.
"I don't want your chip!" He bellowed and smashed it, appalling Gluttony and making tears appear in his eyes.
"What I want Pride," he said while standing up, "is answers." He stomped up to the sin who was more shocked at how quickly the control had shifted away from him than how Wrath was angry. Wrath was always angry. He never had self-control when he was being The Hulk, so how could he have control now, despite not? Pride's head spun with confusion, and it only got worse when he was smashed into the wall like some dastardly supervillain.
"WHERE ARE THE ANSWERS?" Wrath thundered into Pride's face making his hair blow backward, right as a lightning bolt lit up the sky, illuminating the terror that stretched across his face - he was an ax-wielding maniac that wanted to chop up Pride for responses.
A few of the sins rushed up and grabbed Wrath's shoulders and thrust him backward away from Pride who was quite shaken.
"Despite our quietness," Lust drooled out slowly and warily while gripping onto Wrath like glue, "we'd like to know what you mean by angry. Just without a fight." He cast a look at Wrath, who gave it right back to him.
Pride brushed himself off and a few of the crumbles of the wall slid off him. He sighed and put his hands out in defeat. He didn't have slick words like Lust, he wasn't as determined as Envy, and he knew that he had ways of upsetting people regardless of what he said, like a reverse Wrath. But he knew he had to tell them if he had gotten this far, regardless of his talents, or curses.
"You really want to know?" Pride asked, getting six head nods in response, some more vigorous than others.
He sighed, and stared at the floor, in total denial of what he was about to do. Every little thing inside him begged not to continue, but he had to. If they wanted answers, he supposed he had to give them.
Pride brushed his hair aside, folded his hands behind his back, and began to speak.