As of tonight, Maka Albarn's life was entirely planned out from the day she walked down the aisle with Hiro to the day she retired. She considered herself lucky. Most people didn't know what their lives held in store for them. To those people, the future was always a surprise. What a foolish way to live.
Maka met Hiro while studying at the Demon Weapon Meister Academy in Death City. They had class together and saw each other in the halls, but they never interacted until their sandwiches were mixed up in the cafeteria. Maka got his tuna salad on rye while Hiro got her chicken salad on rye, which was a disaster since Maka hated fish and Hiro was a pescetarian. After trading sandwiches and phone numbers, Maka discovered that she and Hiro had a lot in common. They were the only meisters in the EAT class that failed to bond with a specific weapon. The partnerships just never stuck. Maka stubbornly drifted from weapon to weapon for a few years before concluding meisterhood wasn't for her. Hiro just never had the ambition.
Considering how a weapon/meister partnership worked out for her parents, it was probably smarter for Maka to pursue a different career path after graduation. Though it pained her to give up on her childhood dream, Maka left Death City for good and moved to DC (the other DC). Hiro came with her. Two years later, they became engaged. Right on schedule.
They celebrated their engagement with Hiro's family since Maka's parents were on opposite sides of the globe. She retold the sandwich story because everyone loved the sandwich story, Hiro's mother especially. She said it was proof that Hiro and Maka were meant to be. Getting their sandwiches mixed up was destiny.
"Oh please," Maka said in response. "Destiny is something we've invented because we just can't stand the fact that everything is accidental."
Hiro's mother side-eyed Maka and gave her a wry smile. As if she knew better about love and life than Maka did—Maka, who watched a star-crossed love story crumble before her eyes before she was even twelve years old! She wondered then, as she rolled her peas across her dinner plate and stared into her half-full glass of wine, how her mother could have possibly been swept up by a good-for-nothing scythe like her father. Snap decisions, misjudgments, and surprises were part of the meister lifestyle, she supposed. Avoiding that scene altogether was probably the best decision she ever made.
Maka and Hiro arrived at dinner immediately after leaving their respective offices, so they had to drive home separately. While spending two hours cooped up with Hiro wasn't always a cakewalk, nothing bored Maka more than driving alone. Her used Toyota was slowly merging onto the highway when she started flipping through radio stations. She surfed through channels mercilessly until she heard a familiar voice.
"Welcome back to 'You and Your Emotions.'"
Maka groaned. She recognized the calm, lilting voice over the radio as Marie Mjolnir, a former Deathscythe who now made a living as a radio personality. Her father was also a Deathscythe, so she had met Marie once or twice over the years.
"I'm Dr. Marie Mjolnir, broadcasting across America from the top of the Tears Tower in Death City. Tonight we're talking about wishes and dreams. What's your wish? Maybe the best present you can give yourself is a call to me! First, we have a call from Seattle—"
She flipped the station. Maka was certain Mjolnir wasn't a real doctor, and anything would be better than that idiotic, emotional radio show.
"Tonight, Excalibur sings his theme song backwards!"
Maka violently twisted the knob of her radio back a couple stations, and was surprised to hear the small voice of a young boy through her speakers. "Hello, this is Nate —" A loud beep interrupted the little boy's sentence.
"No last names, Nate," The so-called Dr. Mjolnir said calmly. "Hello there, you sound younger than our usual callers. How come you're up so late?"
"It's not that late in Seattle." He sounded like he was only ten years old. Maka chuckled and placed her right hand back on the steering wheel. This kid had snark. She liked that.
"Got me there. What's your wish, Nate?"
"It's not for me. It's for my uncle. He's a scythe, and I think he needs a new meister." Maka shook her head.
"You don't like the one he was now?" Mjolnir asked calmly. Maka reached back towards the radio dial. She would rather hear Excalibur sing his ABCs than listen to this—
"He doesn't have one now," Nate said frankly. Maka's hand froze over the radio dial. "That's the problem."
"Your uncle, huh? Where are your parents?"
"They're on tour. I stay with my dad's little brother when they are gone. It's been a while."
"I see. Well, why does your uncle need a new meister?"
"She's dead." Maka closed her eyes for a moment and gripped the steering wheel. She couldn't believe this. This was a grotesque invasion of privacy. That kid should know better than to air his family's problems on the radio like this. It was a national program—anyone could be listening! She fumed silently as she inched through traffic, but she made no move to switch the radio station.
"I'm sorry to hear that, Nate," Mjolnir said with genuine sincerity.
"I've been pretty sad, but I think he is worse."
"And you're worried about him. Have you talked to your uncle about this?"
"No. It's very hard for him to talk about this stuff. It's like it makes him sadder."
"You want me to talk to him?"
"Don't put on the uncle!" Maka snapped sharply to the radio. She slapped her forehead—what was the use of yelling at the radio? They couldn't hear her. It wasn't like anything she said or felt was going to impact what happened on this damn radio show in Death City, or what happened to this boy all the way Seattle. Mjolnir continued to wag her soothing, silver tongue at the poor boy: she couldn't help his uncle if she didn't speak to him directly. Didn't Nate want to help his uncle get better? She was a doctor after all, and a weapon too. She understood what he was feeling.
Nate responded that his uncle hated shows like this. That makes two of us, Maka thought wryly
"Okay," Nate finally said with extreme reluctance. "But if he turns into a scythe and stabs me, I'm never listening to this show ever again." On the radio, Maka could hear Mjolnir chuckle. "Oh yeah, his name is Soul," Nate added hastily
Maka indignantly stared straight ahead at the road. "This is absolutely disgusting," she said aloud.
A few moments of anxious silence passed, and Maka realized with horror that she was actually invested in what happened next. She once again considered putting a stop to this nonsense by switching stations when a new voice finally came on the line.
"Hullo? I'm probably not interested in whatever you're selling." This new voice was much different from Mjolnir's calm trill and Nate's childish tone. It was deep and rich, and its low timbre sent shivers down Maka's spine. Now that was a voice made for radio. It wasn't just the tone Maka found attractive—it wasn't cheating to feel attracted to a disembodied voice right? This uncle, this scythe, sounded much younger than she originally pictured him. He was irreverent, he was cool, and best of all, he seemed to have some sense.
"I'm Dr. Marie Mjolnir from Network America," Mjolnir said. "I'm not selling anything. Your nephew called to ask for advice to get you a new meister."
"Uh, who is this?" The scythe, Soul, asked.
"Dr. Marie Mjolnir from Network America," the radio host repeated.
"Shit, are we on the air? For Death's sake Nate—" Maka could faintly hear the young boy's explanations and protests over the phone line, and possibly a scuffle over the phone itself.
"Nate feels that since your meister's death you've been very unhappy," Mjolnir said with a steady voice. "He is genuinely worried about you, and he doesn't know how to talk to you about all this. Maybe we could talk and help him feel better."
The radio suddenly crackled with static as Maka drove through a tunnel. She stepped firmly on the accelerator, and cut in front of several cars before finally getting back her signal. She turned up the radio's volume so she could hear over the traffic and bleeping horns.
"I'm not—I'm NOT mad at you," she heard Soul say to his nephew. Damn, she must have missed something. He sighed audibly through the phone. Oh Death, Maka thought. He's actually going to start talking. "Okay. All righ—"
"How long ago did your meister die?" Now that she had him on the line, Mjolnir was cutting right to the chase.
After a few moments, Soul finally answered. "About a year and a half." The undercurrent of pain in his voice was evident, even through a phoneline thousands of miles away.
"Have you partnered with anyone since?"
"Look lady, I don't wanna be rude—"
"And I don't mean to pry—"
Maka snorted and said, "'Course you do."
"'Course you do." Soul said dryly at the same time. Maka smiled. Her Toyota switched lanes and veered down an exit ramp. She liked the sound of their voices overlapping like that.
"Look, I had a tough time at first but I'm getting along fine," Soul said. "I've been holding up fine as a weapon, and Nate and I will get along fine once I destroy his radio." Maka laughed. At this point, she wasn't simply invested. She felt like she was there in a room with all three of them—Marie Mjolnir, Nate, and Soul, the scythe with the golden voice and a broken heart. She pictured Soul as a tall guy with a strong chin, very different from Hiro's gangly silhouette. A voice like that had to have a handsome face to match.
"I have no doubt that you are a good weapon and uncle," Mjolnir said. "You can tell a lot from a person's voice. But there must be a reason Nate feels you are still under a cloud."
"Tell her that you have trouble sleeping at night." Somehow, young Nate was back on the air.
"How do you know 'bout that?" Soul asked. Huh, all three were on the air now. Nate must be on the same line at Soul.
"I hear you walking around sometimes," Nate explained. "I thought it was a kishin or a burglar, but it's just you."
"Yea," Soul said. Sadness had involuntarily crept into his voice again. "Just me."
"Could it be that you need companionship just as much as or even more than you need a meister?" Mjolnir asked.
"YES!" Maka shouted. She clamped her hand to her mouth in shock. "I'm losing my mind," she muttered. She started tugging on her right pigtail. "Get it together, Albarn!" He was a voice—just a voice. The voice of someone she never met, never would meet. He was scythe in Seattle, she was a washed-up former-meister in DC. There are no rational reason behind the aching feeling in her chest, this burning in her cheeks.
Maka's inner monologue was interrupted when Mjolnir cut to commercial break.
"We've been talking to, well, let's call him Scythe in Seattle. We'll be right back after this break with listener response, your response, to the things we've been talking about!"
Commercials started playing, and Maka's mind wandered. There was something wrong with her. Hiro was the perfect fiance. When he proposed, he gave her his grandmother's engagement ring. Despite being several generations old, it was exactly what she would have picked if she had to choose the ring herself. It was like he plucked the image of her dream engagement ring and put it in a velvet box. She expected as much from him, because their entire relationship was like that. No surprises. She didn't have to fight for anything because by the time she had thought of something, it was already in Hiro's hand. It was unfair for Maka to start harboring irrational fantasies about a voice she heard on the radio. She should turn off that radio right now.
But Maka didn't turn it off because, well, Soul interested her for reasons outside his attractive voice. He was a weapon. A scythe, her weapon of choice in school. There were no skilled scythes at the DWMA when she attended, which was a shame because she would have worked harder to make a partnership work if she had a scythe. And Soul was a scythe without a scythemeister.
Maka's gut churned. A sad scythe without a scythemeister. She wasn't just selfish for mentally-cheating on Hiro—she was projecting her desires upon a grieving man she didn't know. Like Mjolnir, Maka suspected Soul's relationship with his past meister wasn't purely professional. It was common enough for meister/weapon partnerships to progress into something romantic. That only made his loss even more painful, and her rabid fantasies even more gross. I'm so screwed up, she thought to herself. She reached for the radio dial when Mjolnir's voice made its triumphant return.
"We're back! For listeners just tuning in, this Dr. Marie Mjolnir from 'You and Your Emotions.' Right now we are talking to Scythe in Seattle, a weapon who needs a new meister. Let's hear from some of our listeners. Hello Arisa, you're on the air."
"Hi," a woman's voice said. "I was just wondering, could you give me that scythe guy's number?" Inhuman noises erupted from Maka's throat.
The rest of the listener calls were similar. Hopeful women who may or may not have even see a demon weapon in their lives, let alone wielded one, were suddenly interested in becoming meisters. The type of women that tuned into 'You and Your Emotions' were horribly desperate. At least Maka had that over them. Not that there anything to compete for here. Maka removed herself from the market long before Hiro proposed.
By the time Soul came back on the line, Maka was parallel parking in front of her townhouse on the outskirts of DC. She left the car running, unwilling to leave before hearing what happened next.
"Do you think there is somebody out there you could love as much as your meister? Maybe even more?" At this point, both Mjolnir and Soul had abandoned the pretense that he wasn't involved with his meister. That only made the whole spectacle that much more touching to listen to.
"It's hard to imagine," was Soul's short reply. He sounded so drained, so exhausted of emotion.
"What are you going to do Soul?"
"I don't know. When I met her, it was just so clear. I just knew." Maka ran the side of her thumb over her lower eyelids, catching tears before they even had a chance to roll down her cheek.
"How did you know?" Mjolnir asked.
On the radio, Soul exhaled shakily. "What the hell. It's not a specific thing. More like a feeling. You touch her for the first time, and the air is different. It's like your soul has come home, but you can hear it. It's like, uh, it's like—"
"Music," Maka and Soul breathed together. Her green eyes widened and she stared at her car radio. To hell with coincidence. This had to mean something. Maka pushed her bangs away from her eyes, suddenly realizing just how much she was crying.
"It's time to wrap up folks," Mjolnir said. "We really hope you'll call again soon. Let us know how its going."
Soul didn't mutter any goodbyes before the radio show switched back to commercial. Maka sank in her seat, immobile. She stayed there for several minutes, not moving or even thinking. She heard a car engine approach—Hiro probably—and she finally gathered the energy to unbuckled her seat belt.
Maka Albarn never did like surprises or destiny or romance, but now she wondered if there was something she was missing out on.