'Ugh, this class is so uncool' Soul thought to himself as he sat in his seat, bored out of his mind, as always. Maka was sitting right next to him, a Giant book in front of her, same as always. Today was just a normal, boring day in class. Nothing out of the ordinary. No excitement. Everyone was just running the motions, barely even acknowledging what they were doing. They looked like they had the very life sucked out of them. And it pissed Soul off.
He wanted to scream. There was just something about today that made him want to grab people, shake them, and yell at them 'what are you doing? Do something different, for god's sake! Stop acting like zombified sacks of flesh!' or something along those lines. He couldn't do that though, it would be so uncool. So he sat through the rest of class. He really couldn't remember a single word professor Stein said, and he really couldn't care less if he heard or not.
When the bell rang, Soul practically jumped out of his seat and ran down the hall towards his locker.
"What is he doing?" Tsubaki asked Maka, "he seems very anxious."
"I don't know," Maka sighed. "He's probably just doing something stupid with Black*Star again." Tsubaki nodded her head in agreement.
"HEY!" Black*Star exclaimed, walking up behind them "Not EVERYTHING we do is stupid!"
'Dang it, Black*Star's voice is really loud.' Maka thought, cringing. Tsubaki was busy trying to calm down a yelling Black*Star, and she was failing miserably.
Soul had just reached his locker, which was on the side of the academy opposite from their classroom. 'Was that Black*Star I heard just now?' he thought to himself. 'Oh well, it really doesn't matter. I just have to get out of here. Get to someplace cool.' He grabbed his backpack out of his locker and ran down the hall, around a corner, and out of the huge double doors that were the entrance to the DWMA.
Soul bolted down the stairs, and was at the bottom of them in no less than 45 seconds. No small feat, considering the stairs leading up to the academy are very, VERY long. He started to run, and he didn't even know where he was going. He didn't care though. He just wanted to run, blow off some steam. He was going crazy from boredom.
He ran around aimlessly for about 10 minutes, when he finally stopped and asked himself, 'what the hell am I doing? This is so uncool. I don't even know where I am now.' It was true. He was in a part of the city he had never seen before. Which he found odd, because he thought he had seen every part of this city that there was to see.
He walked around for a while, trying to find a way out of the district, or at least find something familiar to use as a reference point. He stopped to sit on a bench and just relax to try to think of what he could do to find his way home. He'd tried calling Maka, but his cell phone didn't get any reception here. The people here were kind of hostile. He'd found that out when he had asked for directions. Multiple times. Every time he tried to ask for directions, the person he talked to just glared at him and told him to watch where he was going, or to mind his own business, something like that.
Soul leaned his head back against the bench and sighed. Why'd he end up here? Everyone seemed to hate him, and no matter which way he went, it seemed he ended up in the same place. He suddenly found himself wishing he was back at his and Maka's apartment. He'd been wandering around for several hours, and he was starting to get tired. He wished he was someplace where the sun was laughing over the academy, and- 'wait a minute,' Soul thought. 'Something's not right here. Isn't the sun supposed to be smiling?' he took a moment and looked around, realizing the sun was setting. 'or, in this case, yawning? And I know for a fact that you can see the academy from any part of Death City.' Soul looked up, and confirmed that he could not see the academy from where he was. He even got up and walked across the street to see if the building that was behind him was blocking his view. Once again, the academy was nowhere in sight.
Now Soul was starting to get worried.
"Where the hell am I?" he said to himself. The crowds were starting to thin, everyone was going back to their homes. He looked around, and his eyes wandered to an alley directly across the street from the bench he was sitting on, and he saw a boy around his age walking in his direction. The boy didn't seem to notice him, and he walked to one side of the alley, and seemed to just stare at the wall. Now that he was turned sideways to him, Soul noticed that the boy was holding two sickles, one in each hand.
The boy stared at the wall for about 30 seconds, and then took a step forward, right into the wall. And vanished from Soul's view. Soul's eyes widened, and he stared at the spot where the boy had been. Soul jumped up and ran across the street, but slowed down when he neared the alley where he had seen the boy. He saw footprints leading up to where the boy had been standing before he vanished.
Soul went and stood where the boy had stood, and looked where he thought the boy was looking. He saw that there was an area of the wall that seemed to be slightly darker than the rest of it. Soul was curious. He took a step forward like he had seen the boy do… and was rewarded with a sharp pain to the face. It hadn't worked. He thought that he had finally found a way out of this place!
Soul stepped back with a VERY angry scowl on his face. He was lost, frustrated, tired, and now, in pain. He lost it. He yelled as loud as he could, and slammed his fist into the wall. Instead of intense pain in his fist, however, he felt nothing. He was thrown a bit off balance by the change in motion that he shouldn't have felt, considering that this was a wall. He looked down at his hand and realized with shock that it wasn't there. Neither was his entire forearm. Soul just stared at the spot where the rest of his arm was supposed to be. He could still feel his forearm and fingers, so they weren't gone. They were just… somewhere else. Soul probably would have freaked out, but he had emotionally exhausted himself with that rage-filled punch he had thrown just a few seconds before. Instead, he just moved his hand and fingers around a bit, trying to figure out if he might be able to fit his whole body through the rippling hole his fist had opened.
l,,l ^_^ l,,l
Kidd, Liz, and Patty were walking back to Kidd's house after he had finished giving a speech at a gathering his father had decided to host. All of the DWMA students had been invited, so he was surprised that Soul hadn't shown up.
"Holy Crap!" Patty shouted, snapping Kidd out of his thoughts. "That man is huge!"
Liz turned her head and gasped. "What is that?" She yelled. Kidd was used to ignoring Patty's comments; they usually got him into trouble. But when Liz said something, he had to turn and look. Partly because he knew that Liz was calm and rational most of the time and partly because if the subject being talked about is a fat man, and someone says something like that, you just can't resist turning and looking at how big this man must be.
When Kidd turned his head and looked at the man, he had to say he was a bit shocked. Not because the man was fat, (he actually wasn't nearly as fat as what Patty had made him out to be, although he did look pretty disgusting. He was sleeping in a lawn chair on the other side of the street, holding a beer bottle in one hand.) But because he saw what Liz saw: a hand seemed to be coming straight out of the wall next to the man! The hand was slowly flexing, opening and closing. It looked really weird and it sort of freaked Liz out.
"What the hell is that?" Liz shouted, recoiling in fear.
"I don't know," Kid said quietly. "But whatever it is, let's just try to remain"- All of a sudden, Kid, Liz, and Patty heard a loud snort from the man across the street. Of course, patty found this extremely funny, and started laughing. Kid and Liz both slapped a hand over patty's mouth. That man didn't look particularly dangerous, but if he woke up, it would make finding out what that hand was harder. And he was probably drunk, so if he woke up he probably wouldn't be in a good mood.
Luck was not on their side, however, because the man woke with a start and looked straight at them. He didn't show the slightest sign of grogginess. It was as if he had been awake for hours. He continued to stare at them before he began to follow their gaze, which had been switching from looking at the man to looking at the portal, then back again. When his eyes landed on the portal, they went wide as dinner plates. He leapt up from his chair and leveled a shotgun straight at them.
Liz and patty were already in their weapon forms, and both weapons and the technician were ready. Kid dodged to his left, avoiding a spray of blue soul-wavelength bullets. 'Soul caliber weapons?' Kid thought. 'It doesn't seem like he's an aspiring kishin, since the wavelengths from his weapon are in the cool color spectrum.' Kid didn't have time for much thought besides battle, though, as another blast was on its way. Kid found cover behind a mailbox, then quickly popped up and fired off several shots, which the man deftly dodged. The man was admittedly an impressive fighter, but Kid was obviously superior. Kid jumped up from behind the mailbox, fired a few rapid shots to distract the man, kicked off the front of the mailbox, rolled forward, popped up and raised Liz for a pistol whip. Instead of getting a pistol whip in, he got the butt of a shotgun in his side. 'damn he's fast!' Liz said as she was knocked from Kid's grasp. Kid had but one second before he fell into an OCD induced fit, and he used that second to dive for Liz. Luckily, he made it, and retrieved her before he succumbed to his tendencies. While on the ground, he fired off several shots, and one grazed the man on the right shoulder. The man stumbled, and Kid took this opportunity to run up and get him in the side of the head with Patty. The man stumbled and dropped to the ground.
Liz and Patty changed back into their human forms, and Liz was left to guard the man while Kid went to check what the hand was all about. Patty decided to stay with Liz.
l,,l ^_^ l,,l
Soul had been standing next to that wall for quite some time now. He didn't know why, but he felt no need to pull his hand out of that portal. In fact, he felt that he'd rather keep it there. All of a sudden, he felt an intense wave of pain from the hand that was on the other side of the portal. He yanked his hand back and found that there was no hole or cut or blood, but it had felt like he had been impacted extremely hard. 'But if there was that much pain, but no sign of injury, then that must mean that those were wavelength shots! Is there a battle going on the other side of this portal?' Soul was dying to get a better look, but he suddenly felt a pair of eyes boring into him from behind. He whirled around to find himself face to face with a boy.
The boy was about his age, with medium length hair, a shirt, a hoodie, jeans, and sneakers. Soul couldn't tell much else because of the darkness. The boy was leaning up against the wall of the alley opposite from Soul, and he didn't appear hostile, but Soul kept his guard up regardless. They remained facing each other, motionless. It was Soul who broke the silence.
"What are you doing here?" he asked, a hint of caution in his voice
"I believe I'm the one that should be asking you that question," said the boy, very calmly. "After all, you're the one on my property."
"What?" Soul asked, a bit confused. "You can't own this, it's an alley."
"Oh really?" asked the boy, though it was more of a statement than a question. "I live right down there." He pointed a little farther down the alleyway, where Soul was surprised to see a lone door. "I see you've also found my portal," the boy said, seeming to move on from the last topic. "I have to say I'm impressed. Not just anybody can activate it." Soul merely stood there. He couldn't quite get a grasp on the situation. Perhaps it was because of his drained emotions and mind.
'Why is this guy being so nice?' He thought. 'This has to be some kind of trap.'
"Well," the boy said, "I'm tired, and I don't think I'll be able to sleep tonight if I don't help you get home."
"But how do you"- Soul began, but he was cut off.
"I can tell you're not from around here," the boy said. "If I'm correct, then all you have to do is step through the portal, and you'll be home. Or at least someplace you recognize."
"Uh-uh," Soul said. "No way. I'm not going to just take orders from some stranger!"
The boy shrugged. "Suit yourself," he said, and then darted forward, faster than Soul had power to comprehend at the moment, and pushed Soul into the wall. Or, at least, that's what Soul thought was going to happen. Instead, he felt himself going through the wall and right into… Kid?
l,,l ^_^ l,,l
Death the Kid walked up to the wall and looked at it, puzzled. Yes, the swirling, purple mass that was the portal that the hand was coming out of was still there, but the hand was gone! Kid stared at the wall, perplexed, until something was thrown out of the portal. It hit Kid dead on and he realized that it was… Soul?
"Soul?" Kid asked. "What are you doing here?"
"I wish I knew." Soul sighed. "I've had a long day. Let's go home." Kid shrugged. He motioned for Liz and Patty to follow, and he and Soul started walking. Kid wasn't really worried about the man. He had seemed pretty drunk, so Kid doubted he would remember much once he woke up. As for Soul, he was too tired to really care or think about what had happened that day. Though he couldn't help but wonder about that boy he had seen in the alley. Oh well, he'd wonder about him tomorrow.