A few notes beforehand: - I really enjoyed writing this story and I hope, you'll also have fun reading it. Please note that the build-up may be kind of slow. I'd love any kind of reviews & critisism especially if you feel like something was OOC because I'd like to avoid that. :)
- Thanks to PyromaniacWolf for beta-reading!
- Rating may go up (but I doubt it)
- Disclaimer: I do not own Soul Eater.
As Maka Albarn stood in line for checking her hand luggage through security listening to the frantic reminders of her father:
"Maka, call as soon as you land! Your daddy loves you very much and if you get homesick, you take the next flight home!"
she thought about how everything turned out so much different than she expected.
Just two years ago she had finished high school at the top of her class and had been so excited about her acceptance letter to Stanford. Finally, a chance to get out of the burning heat of Nevada and her high school, a place where she was just known as "pigtails" and her only intellectual competition was an almost bald guy with freaky glasses who had a fetish for pink hair. Her parents, Spirit and Kami, both working in high positions at the town's administration, were sad to see their only daughter wanting to move across the country but decided on letting her choose her own path.
Maka had started crossing out the days until her train out of this city left. But one night her father hadn't come home. And as she and her mother waited at the kitchen table, constantly looking at the clock, her mother confided in Maka that this wasn't the first time that had happened. Maka could see tears well up in her mother's eyes. Her father didn't come home until the next morning and as soon as his key turned in the lock, Kami sent Maka to her room. Still, Maka still caught a glimpse of a drunk man with messy clothes and tousled hair, a man whom she didn't recognize to be her father.
"…Daddy." She whispered quietly behind her door. That would be the last time the word crossed her lips.
Her parents didn't speak to each other in front of her after that. But when they thought that their daughter was asleep, Maka could hear Kami yelling and Spirit begging until a door was slammed and her father left again. It must have been the tenth or twelfth incident when he came home the next day and found divorce papers on the kitchen table. Soon after that, Kami took a job in New Zealand and said her goodbyes.
"Maka, honey, I'm so sorry to leave you behind" she said to the crying girl at the airport. "But please, take care of your father. I know that somewhere in him is still the good man I once fell in love with."
And so, she disappeared and with her Maka's plans to go to Stanford. She knew she could still go but it didn't feel like it mattered anymore. Instead Maka started going to the local community college and waited tables at a café downtown. Most of her former class mates leaving the city to go to other universities made her feel relieved but also somewhat depressed. Her father, while she tried to watch out for him, got much worse. Soon, his womanizing ways were known throughout the city and he lost a lot of friends and respect, which he reacted to by spending even more days at a bar called "Chubra-Bracas".
Then last month, Maka had received a letter from her mother attached to a plane ticket asking her to come visit her soon. It also mentioned that she had some great news for her daughter. As soon as exams were through, Maka had started packing her bags and her heartbroken father had given her a lift to the airport.
"I'm sorry, sir, but you'll have to take that off. Yes, your gloves as well" the voice of a security guard who was slowly reaching his limit of patience reached Maka's ears.
"HAHA! I understand that you have to check these peasants' luggage but I am the great BLACK STAR." Someone yelled so loudly that everyone's attention now turned to the front of the metal detector.
Another security guard tapped Maka on the shoulder "Miss, we're opening a new line. Would you please follow me?"
"Alright" she answered. Shouldering her backpack, she turned to her father one last time.
"Bye, Dad!"
"MAKAAA! Remember, Daddy loves you!"
"Yes, Dad. I know."
Maka followed the guard and caught a glimpse of the cause of the disturbance, a blue haired boy at the front of her line who was now standing ON the belt wearing nothing but boxers and making a lot of noise, the only words she could make out were "Black Star" and "God".
Two hours later and 4000 feet up in the air she wondered how was it possible for a lasagna to be entirely tasteless. She opened up the side salad of the plane food but it looked like the dead kitchen herbs on her balcony. The label on the dessert container said „No sugar! No diary!". Despite the questionable contents, she ate half of it before putting it aside and pulling out her snacks from the duty-free-shop.
The person next to her hadn't even touched their food.
"I don't like the food here either. Luckily, I brought my own. Would you like some of my chips?" She asked them with the friendliest voice she could muster. The head of pink hair next to her didn't even react. It just stared at the seat while the appendant body stayed completely still.
Maka shrugged and turned away. Her seat neighbor had been like this for the past hour now after they had shaken uncontrollably during the takeoff, pulling on their long black dress and yelling "I don't know how to deal with this!" to the safety instructor on the screen.
Maka had tried calming them down. After someone called a stewardess and not even she had been able to do anything effective, she had apologized to Maka that there was no open seat that she could move her to and had given her a pair of complementary head phones.
From time to time Maka would look over to her neighbor and say something encouraging but so far with no effects. Maka didn't mind the silence. At least she was not sitting next to the boisterous blue-haired guy whose voice she could sometimes make out from the other end of the plane. Still, Maka was a bit confused why someone obviously mentally unstable would take a transatlantic flight by themselves. She decided that after they were landed, she would make sure that the person would get their luggage and know where to go.
Until then, it was obvious that she could do nothing to help. She checked the screen above them which displayed the current position of the plane on the map. They had left the main land and were flying over the ocean. The clock said there were another five hours until arrival. Maka leaned back in her seat and pulled out a book. Time to indulge in the adventures of courageous heroes in medieval fantasy lands.
Half an hour later the stewardesses started closing the window shutters and dimming the lights. Maka closed her book. A bit of sleeping couldn't hurt. It looked like her pink-haired neighbor was also dozing off. That would be good for them, Maka thought. She tucked herself in a blanket and fell asleep immediately.
A loud noise startled her awake. The person next to her was not sleeping anymore. Eyes fixated on the map screen, they made incomprehensible, loud sounds. Maka was just about to put in her ear plugs and turn to the other side, when the air plane shook and her stomach started turning. The voice of the pilot came through the intercom.
"We're experiencing some turbulences. Please return to your seats and close your seatbelts."
The pink-haired person let out a hysterical cry.
"Don't worry," Maka said smilingly "that happens all the time. It will be over soon."
There was still no reaction but Maka continued speaking while the airplane still shook.
"We're probably flying through bad weather. The shaking you feel is just the wind. Air planes are built so that they can even resist a thunderstorm. We are very safe."
Suddenly the plane hit an air hole and dropped several hundred feet. Some bags fell out of an open overhead bin. The people around Maka started making concerned noises. Another jolt went throughout the plane and it started to shuttle from left to right. A whimmering sound came from the person next to Maka.
"Hey, hey. No need to cry. Look at me. Everything will be fine." Maka felt the pressure in her ears increasing. She continued talking trying to calm herself down.
"I'm Maka, I'm on this flight to visit my mother. What is your name?"
The floor was vibrating. The lights flickered. Suddenly, for the first time, the person looked at her. They had large, droopy eyes filled with terror.
"Chrona" they said. Then Maka heard a crash and everything turned dark.
Thanks for reading! I'm new to formatting so if you have any suggestions on that, I'd be most appreciative. See you in the next chapter!