Prologue: Cara
The museum was cold.
It was cold, and the walls and the tile were white, and I was afraid.
I knew I shouldn't be here, but I stood with the other seven-year-olds and looked at my feet. The excited chatter buzzed in my ears, and I felt a little sick. My ears rang, and I touched my fingers to my thumbs, one by one. Mama always told me not to do that, but I never listened to her. When I didn't touch my fingers, the buzzing got worse, and then I didn't know what would happen if I didn't make it stop.
I never felt like listening to Mama. Somehow, I felt no reason to. Most people wouldn't even think we were related if you looked at us. But I was a good little girl, and I followed directions(mostly), because I was too afraid of what would happen if I didn't.
Looking around, I didn't see a single person I could honestly say was my friend. I was pretty good at judging people, and somehow no one in my class seemed... enough. They smiled and laughed and talked about their favorite holo-shows, but that was all they ever did.
The guide lady looked down at us, smiling warmly. Something in that smile felt right, though. Like she was looking into my soul, and sending rays of sunshine right in.
I couldn't help it; I smiled back.
"All right, boys and girls!" She said, still smiling. "Is everyone excited to be here?" The class cheered, but I didn't. I looked down at my shoes again.
I wasn't excited to be here.
"That's wonderful," the guide lady told us, but she sounded... sad? I don't know. Maybe it was too cold. That was it.
"Well, if everyone gets into a line, we can start!" She was smiling again, but there were no rays of sunshine.
Most of the time, I stayed at the back of the class. Not this time. I ran to the front, and stood by the guide lady. She was nice. Besides, I knew my teacher, Mrs. Trent, would stand at the back of the line when we went on field trips, so I wanted to stay away from her. She didn't like me so well; I got the feeling she thought I was weak when she looked at me.
Maybe I was weak. I was afraid of an old lady.
The guide lady started walking, and I had to trot to keep up with her. I felt... better, I guess, when I was close to her. I didn't know why, but I did. Not as afraid.
"Okay, raise your hand if you know about the five species," the guide lady said enthusiastically. I raised my hand, and so did the rest of the class. "Wow, all of you? That's surprising. I've never seen so many hands before," she laughed.
"I made sure all of them knew from their first day in my class," Mrs. Trent said. She had been our teacher since pre-kindergarten, and she would mentor all of us until we were deemed ready to go on to our next teacher. Class One was age four and up, and covered basic history, reading, writing, and simple mathematics. Class Two was more of the same, extending to some science. Then, Class Three was still more of the same, with a few more subjects. After that, a child chose which class to next go into, out of a group of several dozen subjects, and what class they went into then would tell which jobs they could have.
We were supposed to be learning about a lot of stuff in Class One, but Mrs. Trent mostly taught us about history. She liked Human History a lot.
One thing she never told us, though, I learned from Daddy: the way schools were set up was a mix of how it was for humans two hundred years ago, and how it was at the DWMA.
"Hmm..." the guide lady sad, dramatically placing one hand on her hip, and the other on her chin in an over exaggeration of curiosity. "I wonder if any of you can name all of the five species."
Most of the seven-year-olds started waving their hands in the air. A few of them turned the hovers on their shoes way up so they would seem taller, and have a better chance of getting picked.
"No hovers in the museum!" The nice guide lady said, and everyone reluctantly settled back to the floor. She looked at me. "How about you? Can you name the species?"
"I didn't raise my hand," I mumbled, embarrassed and afraid of getting the answer wrong.
"I bet you know them. Come on," the guide lady said, smiling a real smile again.
"O... Ok. Um, humans," I said, counting down on one hand. "Meisters, weapons, witches, and shiniginami." I stumbled over the last word. The way I saw Mrs. Trent looking at me, I knew I'd gotten the name wrong again.
The guide lady laughed, flipping one side of her golden hair over her shoulder. "That's right. Good job. What's your name?"
"Cara," I said, looking down at the floor.
"What was that?"
"Cara!" Louder this time.
"Well, good job, Cara." She led us through the museum lobby to the wide double doors that opened to a circular room with seven hallways branching out. "Welcome to the Museum of Human History!"
My heart started beating in my ears. Get out, get out, get out, get out repeated endlessly in my head, and I inched closer to the guide lady. I felt better. She looked down and saw me next to her, and suddenly, without warning, my fear was almost gone. Like magic.
"Let's start at the very beginning. It's a very good place to start," she said in a sing-songy voice, laughing. No one laughed with her, and she got that sad expression again. "This hallway here," she pointed to the hallway most to the right, "contains all sorts of information about what it was like back when everyone who was mortal was human. I mean-" she sighed. "Sorry. I mean, do you guys know what mortal means?"
Just me.
I raised my hand. Maybe I could get Mrs. Trent to like me better if I looked smart.
"It means somebody who can die."
"Exactly," said the guide lady. She looked down at me, and I sensed she felt proud. When I looked back at Mrs. Trent, though, she pretended she didn't notice. I could tell she was only pretending, though.
She didn't like me because I was quiet, and she thought I was weak. She had told everyone that we had to act strong, because we were human, and humans had regained their freedom to fight for themselves, so it was our responsibility to do so. I didn't understand why that meant being loud and obnoxious all the time.
We walked down the first corridor, and right before the lobby got out of view, I saw another group of students come in through the teleport. They were led by a small, dark-haired young woman with her hair tied back into a braid.
Come to think of it, all of the museum attendants with long hair had theirs in a braid down their back. Except our guide. She had her blonde hair down, and it cascaded over her shoulders, and only one honey-colored eye showed. She was also a little older than the other workers. Maybe she'd been here longer. I didn't know.
The slick white walls had holes in them, square and perfect to show smart glass-encased boxes with odd objects in them. An old, worn bandage, a spider that had been preserved in quick-dry syrup. Odd things. Slideshows danced across glass screens, and holographic guides made to look like Alexander the Great, Buddha, and King Arthur stood beside exhibits and talked, or walked around. Some even patted a shoulder as someone walked by. The museum wasn't very busy, and every word spoken echoed through the halls.
"Eight hundred- sorry. Let me start over," began the guide lady. "A thousand years ago, humans thought they were alone on the planet. They..." blah blah blah blah blah. Mrs. Trent wasn't kidding when she said she'd made us learn Human History since day one. We all knew that witches and shinigami worked together to make the first meister/weapon teams, including Asura, Eibon, and Death himself.
"The first demon weapon ever was the Holy Sword Excalibur," the guide lady went on. "No one really knows how he was created, but the idea for human weapons came from him. He took the form of an odd, anteater-like creature while not in combat, but was able to aide many young men and women when they were in need of supernatural assistance." Her expression turned to that of disgust as the hologram of King Arthur raised his jewel-encrusted sword to the sky, then put it to his side, a cartoonish... thing taking its place next to the king. I thought I heard the guide lady gag a little, but I wasn't sure.
"Anyways, Excalibur was the only non-human living weapon-" she was cut off.
"No," said Mrs. Trent. "None of those weapons were human. There's a reason the two species are considered separate legally."
"Oh!" The guide lady exclaimed, turning to look at Mrs. Trent, her left eye being exposed for just a moment. It was closed completely. Like she had injured it and never gotten it fixed. That's odd. Why didn't she just order a new eye? Or clone herself and transfer her consciousness into the new body? This lady was a little weird. I didn't even recognize her accent.
"Of course. But the first weapons were a fusion of regular humans and inanimate objects, and Excalibur was not. We consider weapons to be a humaniod species." The guide lady eyed Mrs. Trent with a degree of annoyance, but I could tell she was holding back. Something about what my teacher had said infuriated her. I spent the rest of our time in that hallway thinking about what it was that made me think the guide lady was different, but I couldn't tell what it was.
The next hallway was about the DWMA.
"Shibusen, or the Death Weapon Meister Academy, was a school founded by the Grim Reaper in Nevada. It was a home for many weapons and meisters after the Houdini Law was passed."
The kids looked around at each other, murmuring. "What's that?" One kid shouted
The woman blinked for a moment. "Oh. I would have thought you all already knew that, since you're such a smart group of children."
The thing was, Mrs. Trent didn't teach us so much about the DWMA.
"Well, the Houdini law stated that all non-humans must attend Shibusen for a few years, in order to learn to control their abilities. Sometimes children might accidentally activate their weapon gene, and even hurt someone on accident. So we- the teachers at the DWMA would help them." She smiled at us until we nodded that we understood.
I saw that many of my classmates were watching videos or playing games on their eye screens. They couldn't pay attention for ten minutes? Seriously.
There were some pictures of the school. It was… beautiful. It had giant spikes and candles sticking out in an array that was even on each side. Symmetrical. Red, black, and white. Now, no country could even have those colors on their flag.
The next hallway was about meisters.
"There were several types of wavelengths," the guide lady explained, "That could be controlled by either species." Somehow, I got even more queasy, and I began fidgeting more feverishly. I clung to the nice lady until I felt better.
She explained that the healing wavelength took away fear, the madness wavelength could infect someone's mind and cause them to go insane, and the exorcism, also called demon slayer wavelength, could combat the madness.
"Can anyone name one famous person who carried the madness wavelength?" The guide lady asked. Everyone knew this one. It was like asking everyone's birthday.
"Maka Albarn," said the boy she called on. Mrs. Trent nodded at him.
"Very good," the lady said. "Does anyone know which she had before she went insane?"
No one knew that one. We just knew she'd snapped one day.
"Actually, she was an exorcist. She was supposed to be immune to insanity." Everyone was confused at this. It sounded impossible.
"Pop question: who knows how come she went mad?" She eyed each one of us in turn. I tentatively raised my hand.
"Cara?"
"Her weapon died," I whispered.
"Well, not technically," the lady began. "She found her scythe in weapon form by the side of the road, with his soul missing from his body. No one knows what happened. But after that, she didn't have enough energy from her weapon to control her demon slayer wavelength anymore, and she went mad." She swallowed painfully and went on. "And then... and then she spread the madness to the rest of her squad, the Spartoi, the most elite students in the DWMA."
There was a holo-statue in the middle of the floor of a bunch of meisters holding their weapons. I slowly read each name in turn.
Maka Albarn with her scythe, Soul Eater
Blackstar Barrett with his shadow arm, Tsubaki Nakatsukasa
Death the Kidd with pistols Elizabeth and Patricia Thompson
Kirikou "Kilik" Rung with Pot of Fire and Pot of Thunder
Ox Ford with electric lance Harvar D. Eclaire
Kimial "Kim" Deihl with lantern Jacqueline O'Lantern-Dupre
Crona Makenshi with longsword Ragnarok Makenshi
Akane Hoshi with greatsword Clay Sizemore
Meme Tatane, autonomous meister
Anya Hepburn with halberd Tsugumi Harudori
Some of the other kids were still trying to read the first few names by the time I was completely done. Most gave up.
"The squad started with just the first six, but as their success grew the last four teams were added," the nice guide lady explained. "Who knows where the Spartoi are now?"
No one knew this one.
"They are frozen in cryosleep under what used to be the DWMA." I sensed that a huge emotional toll came with these words for the nice lady. "They were captured and frozen just in case they were ever needed one day, as were the top Deathscythes for all of the countries, each in their own headquarters. The American ones were taken to the other continents."
There was a holographic display of all of the Deathscythes and their meisters, but the lady took us right by it and for some reason wouldn't even let us look. It was subtle, and only Mrs. Trent and I noticed.
"After the United States government saw just how dangerous meisters and weapons could be, all of them were rounded up, whether they were soldiers or just members of society, and taken to camps." We rounded the corner into the next hallway. "Now, they are raised in what used to be Death City, never knowing the power within them. Now, all of our world is human, and we fight with weapons we forge ourselves. The races we once trusted with our safety are fed simple foods and bred according to traits considered desirable in case of an emergency. All lineages are recorded. However, scientists suspect that ignoring those traits for so many generations may have caused the traits to become dormant, perhaps permanently." The lady's speech pattern had changed. I looked up.
She was now reading off of a script on her eye screen.
She didn't seem used to having one. In fact, she was so distracted that she tripped, knocking me over with her.
"Cara!" Mrs. Trent called. "Why don't you come stand with me?" She gestured to the place next to her in line.
"It's fine," the guide lady said. "I just lost my footing for a moment, that's all." She laughed a little.
"That may be true, but I still want Cara to come stand with me." She looked at me meaningfully.
So I did. And the moment I left the guide lady's immediate area, I started shaking.
This next hallway focused on weapons.
"Weapons could begin to show their abilities anywhere between the ages of three and fifteen; a lot of the time they were identified by their family doctor."
"What's a doctor?" One kid asked.
"Someone who was responsible for making sure people's bodies were in good condition. Like your medbots, but a person."
"Oh."
"Anyways, if they didn't find out from their doctor, they could start to show their abilities completely by accident. Maybe their hands turned into blades, or they shot fire, or something like that. It usually was triggered by a moment of great emotional stress."
The guide lady smiled a bit fondly at a portrait of a Japanese lady with shortish hair and glasses.
"This is Yumi Azusa, head of the East Asian department of Shibusen." She told us about how she had had the ability to speak to people in their minds, as well as tell the layouts of buildings they were in. It was called Senrigan.
"What's that?" A boy pointed to a hallway that branched off of this one. The sign read "ARMORY". I think I was the only one who could read it, though.
Almost the entire class started asking if we could go down to the mysterious corridor.
"Let's go," said Mrs. Trent, not asking the guide lady for approval.
Don't go don't go don't go.
I tried to catch up to the guide lady, but Mrs. Trent held me back.
We rounded into the corridor, and I caught a glimpse of my own pale green eyes in the reflection of the blade of a sword. Looking around, I saw the hall was lined with weapons of every shape, size, and color, with tiny labels underneath each.
"These are the captured weapons who were bound and subjected to radiation until their souls died. Most of them are two hundred years old." The guide lady's voice broke, but no one was listening. The seven-year-olds ran up and down the hallways, giggling and pointing. Why was I the only one that felt so sick?
"Look at that one," Mrs. Trent said, pointing to a pair of nunchuks with deep pink and blue swirls. "She had the same name as you." Then my teacher walked away to scold the other children.
I think that was when I noticed that not only were my hands twitching more than usual, but they felt really funny. I looked at them, and I saw that they were covered in something shiny.
No they weren't.
They were made of metal.
Sometimes they could start to show their abilities completely by accident. Maybe their hands turned into blades, or they shot fire, or something like that. It was usually triggered by a moment of great emotional stress.
Suddenly the guide lady was crouching in front of me, with her hands on my shoulders. She spoke slowly and carefully, and I felt…. calm.
"I got my powers when I was seven, too. I was in the first grade, and my class was watching the movie 'Marley and Me'. It's like, a picture that moves but doesn't come off the page. Anyways, it was about a dog."
Why wasn't I afraid anymore?
"In the end, the dog died, and I cried."
Oh, yeah.
"And I saw that something was wrong with my desk."
The healing wavelength.
"I looked down and I saw that my hands were sparking."
It takes away fear.
"And then I saw that I had been shocking the metal part of my desk. And I was so, so scared. But one day I was so glad that my hands had started sparking that afternoon. I didn't want to be human anymore, ok?"
She was looking me right in the eyes.
"Hey!" Mrs. Trent called to the nice guide lady. "What are you doing, touching my students?"
"Relax," the lady called. "I used to be a teacher like you."
She looked me in the eyes again and whispered to me. "Remember Azusa? The one who could talk to people in their minds?"
I nodded.
"Oh, really?" Mrs. Trent asked the lady. "Which class did you teach?"
The lady stood up and faced the old woman.
"The E.A.T. Class."
Mrs. Trent's eyes widened as the lady brought her hands together and electricity began crackling between them. One hand turned to a metal-ish rock.
She looked down at me again, and touched two fingers to the side of her head. "This is her. Her name is Cara."
Hello, Cara.
The voice came from all around, but inside me at the same time.
This is Azusa. I need you to listen to what I say and do exactly what I tell you. Ok?
"Ok," I said, and the lady nodded at me.
Run down the hallway, away from where you came in.
I did, and while I ran I heard the lady speaking again.
"When I was human, my name was Marie Whitlock. When I found out I was a human weapon, I changed my last name to Mjolnir. First I helped my meister teach Duel Arts, and then I taught Wavelength control to Spartoi. I was the one Maka Albarn's roommate called when she heard the screams. I was the one that had to watch each and every last one of my students become mindless killers."
"But worst of all, I had to wake up in a cold, watery box and find out that two hundred years had passed since then, and that by now my entire species has been imprisoned."
The farther away I got from Miss Marie, the more afraid I became.
It'll be alright, sweetheart.
Just keep running.
When she told me to, I jumped down into a pocket in the floor in a little alcove at the end of the hallway. I was supposed to wait until the coast was clear.
I'm so sorry we had to do this to you, sweetheart.
I got this idea while walking around at Walmart. I'm rather proud of it.
I'd suggest reading "Click", the story I submitted a few days ago, which will help understand this one. However, it isn't necessary.
By the way, if you read "Click", and it showed up the same as "Duct Tape", it's because I accidentally submitted the wrong document. But I fixed it. It's better now.
There will be a lot of Kami, Spirit, Stein, Marie, Blair, and Angela. And an OC, non Mary Sue.
Extra awesomeness points and a mention in the next chapter if you can guess who Cara is.