A/N: Hey all~ I just finished Soul Eater and have had this story hanging around in my head for a while begging me to write it, so I decided to go ahead and do it. Spoilers for the manga, which I am reading right now to figure out what's going on in the world, but I've only started reading it so I might get stuff wrong. I can tell you right now that I'm planning on keeping Mifune alive and at the DWMA like he was in the anime, so the final result will probably be some mesh of manga/anime things. Technology-wise, I'm putting the level of tech in the original anime at somewhere in the 90s, so this fic moves the whole world forward so that everyone's at today's level of technology (cellphones, laptops, the internet…etc.)

I'm posting the prologue now to sort of test the waters. Please let me know if you guys are interested in seeing more! Thanks!

FD

Disclaimer: I don't own Soul Eater. All original characters are mine, though. Please don't use them without permission.

PROLOGUE

Destined Duo; DWMA's Rising Star Approaches

When Maka Albarn was leaving home for her first day at the DWMA, Spirit had stood in her room and cried, loudly and embarrassingly, proclaiming how proud he was of her and how sad he was that she was growing up. He had continued the crying almost all the way to the school, until she finally put her foot down and left him around the corner to take her first steps into the institution by herself. It had been a sour note in what, for all intents and purposes, had been a very good and very important day, and she'd sworn silently to herself that if she ever had children of her own, she would keep it together a little bit better. For the most part, she'd kept that promise.

Still, standing alone in Rei's childhood room while waiting for him to finish getting ready, Maka wondered if there might not be a little more of her father in her than she thought.

She didn't want to cry, because that would definitely ruin Rei's day, so instead she walked quietly around the room, putting things in order as she listened to the sound of the shower coming from the bathroom down the hall. She picked a T-shirt up off the floor, giving it a quick sniff before wrinkling up her nose and tossing it in the laundry hamper, straightened the guitar case that was propped up against the wall before it fell over. She smoothed down the edge of a concert poster, a faint smile coming to her face as she remembered the day Soul and Rei had returned from the concert, Rei riding on Soul's shoulders. She picked books up off the ground, setting them gently on their shelves, straightened out the sheets without going so far as to make the bed, picked up a portable gaming system from where it lay forgotten and put it up on the desk. Little things, here and there, to make the room a little more livable. They weren't things she would have to do for much longer.

She straightened up from organizing the bookshelves, dusting her hands off on her knees. A piece of paper on the floor caught her eye and she picked it up, holding it carefully up to the light. The smile tugged at her lips, widening even as she felt her heart grow heavy. It was a crayon picture drawn in a child's hand, a crudely drawn stick-figure of a boy standing in front of a house, two smaller girls on either side of him. They were all smiling. There was a note scrawled in purple crayon in the top corner.

For Big Brother, From Annie

We 3 You

The picture had to be at least two years old. Annie's handwriting was much better now. It looked like it had been folded and unfolded again, like Rei had looked at it recently. She remembered how easily embarrassed boys could be at that age and folded it carefully, tucking it just under the edge of Rei's laptop and pretending she didn't see. Her eyes misted over in spite of her earlier promise as she took a step back. She wasn't going to cry, she told herself, taking a deep breath and patting her cheeks. Not at all.

The shower stopped running.

"Mom, are you in here?" asked a voice, making Maka turn around. Rei was standing in the doorway, his blond hair still damp from the shower and already sticking up every which way. His eyes were Soul's eyes, red. He tugged uncomfortably at the tie he was wearing, the button-down shirt and pants beneath it resembling the school uniform that Maka had spent most of her earlier DWMA days wearing as well. He wore a dark colored jacket over it, collar unbuttoned and tie loose.

She gave in to the urge to straighten it, buttoning his collar and fixing his tie before attempting to smooth out his hair. Rei squirmed, making a half-hearted attempt to pull away.

"Mom—," he said.

"Just for today," said Maka with a smile, stepping back from him and lowering her hands to his shoulders. "After tomorrow, I promise you won't have to worry about it at all."

Just saying the words made the knot in her heart tighten, but she put on a brave face, looking down at the teenage boy standing in front of her and letting her hands fall back to her side. Rei lowered his eyes to the ground, shuffling awkwardly, and she wondered if she might not be the only one feeling a little sad. She knew better than to call him out on it, though.

"Is this okay?" Rei asked.

She looked over what Rei was wearing one last time, her eyes lingering on the tag he had pinned to his chest, the one reading MEISTER in big block letters. Pride and sadness wove together somewhere in her chest.

"You look fine," she said, placing one hand on Rei's shoulder and squeezing it. "Come on, you don't want to be late."

She left the room first, Rei following close behind her.

"Dad left already?" he asked as they walked down the stairs.

Maka nodded. "The girls had to leave early for school," she said. "They didn't want to go." If she was in a betting mood, she would have said that Soul didn't want to go either, but Rei wasn't the only one that would get embarrassed about things like that, so she kept that to herself. She looked back at her son as he paused at the door, bending down to pick up his shoes.

"Oh," he said. "I kinda—uh—wanted to say goodbye." A flush spread across his face as he looked away, tugging his shoes onto his feet. Maka wanted to stop him, to drag him back into the living room and tell him 'next year, how about next year?', but she clenched her fist against the urge instead, smiling and ruffling his hair.

"You'll tell them tonight," she said. "When you come back with your new partner."

Partner.

She felt the change in Rei the moment she said the word, felt him pull himself away from her. He looked down at the ground, stuffing his hands in his pockets as he followed her out the door. Maka frowned, but locked up behind her, waiting for Rei to speak. When he didn't, she spoke first.

"Everything alright, Rei?" she asked.

"Yeah," said Rei, following her onto the sidewalk as they started walking towards the DWMA. "I just…what if I never find a partner? What if no one resonates with me?"

The words, achingly similar to her own reservations the day she stepped out of her house to head to the DWMA, made the knot tighten some more. She stopped walking and reached out, resting her arm on his shoulders in a one-armed hug. "What, someone as sweet as you?" she asked. She pressed a kiss to the top of his head. "You'll find a partner, Rei. Don't worry."

"But what if—?" Rei began.

"It will be okay," said Maka, smiling as she pulled away. She caught a glimpse of Rei's soul, seated deep within him, scared, but putting on a brave front. Warm. Kind, with the hint of something that might have been wings. She had no doubt in her mind that someone would resonate with her son today. "I promise, it will be okay. Don't worry."

"But what if it isn't?" asked Rei. "What if I really can't find a partner?"

"Then we'll love you anyway," said Maka. "And you can always keep trying. Sometimes, it takes a while."

"Annie and Cori—," Rei began.

"—are seven," Maka finished. "And not ready for the DWMA."

Thankfully. Maka didn't think she could handle it.

"But how will I know if I've found the right partner?" Rei asked. "How will I know I'm not making a mistake?"

"You'll know," said Maka, remembering the day she had taken Soul's hand, the day he performed for her. "When it feels right, you'll know." She tugged at Rei's hand to get him moving again. "Come on. You're going to be late."

Despite his misgivings, Rei started walking, and despite her own misgivings, Maka let him walk up the steps to the school, leaving him in the courtyard with the other new students as she walked into the building.

Without Rei.

It felt like her heart was going to fall apart, but she'd managed to do it without shedding any tears. She smiled, proud of herself, and stubbornly wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand before walking towards the faculty lounge. Already, the DWMA's older students were filling the halls, talking excitedly about the new crop of first years. She saw a few people with WEAPON or MEISTER tags on, already mingling with each other. So many of them and so young. Her smile widened in spite of herself, and she walked into the faculty lounge, stopping at her desk to pick up the things she needed for class. Rei would be fine. By this time tonight, she and Soul would likely be meeting his new partner.

Maka glanced down at the photograph on her desk, smiling as she remembered how they were when they were that age. It was a picture taken back during the Spartoi days, before Kid's ascension. They were all so young. She hadn't realized it at the time, but age had given her a new way of looking at things. She picked up the frame and studied it, names and faces coming back to her as her eyes lingered on each one.

They stopped at the weapon and meister pair on the corner nearest her thumb, next to her and Soul. Tsubaki was smiling serenely at the camera as, next to her, Black Star crouched down, striking a pose. A thought nagged at her then, an idea stirring in the back of her mind as she ran her thumb over the two of them.

Yes, she thought, as she counted the years in her mind. It would be about that time…

Maka set down the picture, raising her hand to her mouth and stifling a giggle at the thought. She wondered if—but no, Rei had to do this on his own.

Still, she thought, wouldn't that be something?

Still smiling, she put the picture back down and gathered up her things for class.

Despite the brave face he had tried to put on for his mom on the walk over here so that she wouldn't freak out and draw him back inside the house or something, Rei was abjectly miserable. It had been two hours since Sid had gathered the new first years in the courtyard and let them loose with the only instruction being to mingle, and already Rei was trying very hard not to hate his existence. He wasn't the most extroverted of people, but since their only task for today was to get to know other people and try to find a partner, he'd done his part to single out and talk to the weapons that arrived. He'd even attempted resonating with a few and had a burned hand and a black mood to show for it. Since then, he'd restricted himself to handshakes, figuring out pretty quickly that his mom was right, he could tell when it wouldn't work out. But even that hadn't given him much luck. To make it worse, people were already beginning to drift off into pairs and break away from the group, which didn't help his feeling that he'd be the last one standing alone at the dance.

This was a stupid system for partnering up, Rei thought, his hands jammed morosely into his pockets as he rounded the corner. Why couldn't they just…take a personality test, or something? That would be so much easier.

"Hey, Rei!" said a familiar voice.

Rei lifted his head at the sound, turning towards the boy standing at the other end of the hallway, his hand raised in greeting. The boy had short brown hair, teased up into slight spikes in places. He wore an earring in one ear, glinting silver, and his eyes were a steel gray. He was still dressed in the perfectly symmetrical uniform of Shibuko, the Death Weapon Orphanage that Shinigami-sama had set up for young weapons that had been abandoned by their families.

In spite of his dark mood, Rei put a grin on his face, raising his hand as well.

"Hey, Vayne," he said, reaching out and bumping fists. "Still wearing the uniform, huh?"

Vayne grinned, taking a step back and straightening up proudly. "Didn't have much else to wear," he said. "You find a partner yet?"

Rei frowned. Vayne Damocles was one of his oldest friends, and he would have already been rushing to partner with Vayne already if not for the fact that they just didn't resonate. At all. They'd tried.

"Not yet," he said. "You?"

"Have a few prospects," said Vayne, grinning. "Haven't settled on one yet, though. What's the rush, right?"

"Yeah," said Rei, feeling just a little more miserable. "Right."

Vayne frowned, as if noticing his mood. "We could try again if you like," he said, holding out a hand.

"Nah," said Rei, shaking his head. "I've already burnt my hands once today. Besides, the last time we tried that, it went…badly."

"That's true," said Vayne. "Well, hang in there, man. Introduce me to your weapon when you find one."

"Yeah, sure," said Rei. "When."

Vayne clapped him once on the shoulder as they passed each other, the two of them heading to opposite ends of the hallway. Rei shrugged and slipped his hands back into his pockets, doing his best not to envision life in the EAT class without a weapon partner. He really didn't want to end up working at Deathbucks like Hero. He shuddered. If he couldn't find a weapon, maybe he could just quit. Wait for the twins to grow up. Except waiting for your younger sisters was just so not cool, and everyone expected him to find a weapon today. How could he not? He was the son of Maka-freaking-Evans and the last Death Scythe.

He was so going to put in a vote for that personality test.

Rei sucked in a breath, reminding himself that it wasn't the end of the world and that there was still plenty of time left in the day. Surely he wouldn't be the only one left partnerless. Lots of people took a while to find weapons or meisters. Of course, most of those people were in the NOT class, but hey, he had to look on the bright side of things.

Hero. Deathbucks.

He thought he was going to be sick.

Rei took a deep breath, because getting sick on the first day of school was definitely not cool, and decided to make for the courtyard again. A lot of the other first-years had gathered there, and a few latecomers were starting to filter in. Who knew? Maybe he'd see something interesting.

He stepped outside into the hot desert wind and nearly walked straight into a brawl.

Well, it wasn't a brawl, really. It was more of a commotion. Someone was shouting from within the tight knot of first-years clustered in the main courtyard. No, wait, someones. Two people.

"You cut my hands!" someone, a boy was shouting. "What's the matter with you?"

"It's not my fault!" said a girl's voice, loudly. There was something about this voice that he recognized somehow, something from long ago. "How is it my fault if you can't handle me?!"

"Ow, ow, ow, what the hell?!" shouted the boy. "What the hell is wrong with your soul? Freak!"

Rei stepped down into the courtyard, pushing his way into the crowd. They parted for him, letting him catch a glimpse of a dark-haired boy with glasses kneeling on the ground, his palms bleeding from multiple cuts and scratches of varying depth. Blood dripped onto the stones beneath him as he cradled them close to his body, hissing in pain as he glared at the teal-haired girl in front of him. The people around him were already moving to help him, some of them giving the girl wary glances as well.

The girl took a step back and looked around, her eyes frantically moving from the man on the ground to the people beginning to surround him, to the students shooting angry, distrustful glances at her. Her eyes widened, some of the color draining from her face before she clenched her fists at her side, drawing herself up straighter.

"Well, forget it!" she said. "Screw you all! I don't need you! I'll go solo!"

Before Rei could say anything, she pushed her way through the crowd, running past him.

As she moved, he thought he saw something glistening in her eyes.

It took him a while to find the girl. The path she had taken out of the courtyard was easy enough to follow—she had pretty much bulldozed her way through all the onlookers, leaving a clear path in her wake, but from there she vanished like smoke. He finally found her on one of the DWMA's upper floors, a balcony that overlooked the city. She was crouched in the shadow, her back to him, like she had tripped and fallen and decided not to bother getting up. Her face was turned away.

Rei stopped and looked at her before he approached, trying to place her. He knew this girl, had met her sometime before. He was sure of that. Thick teal hair, falling past her shoulders and halfway down her back, a lock of it tied up in a small side ponytail on the left side of her head. She was dressed in dark clothes, a sleeveless black top with a few designs in white, dark pants, boots, black fingerless gloves. Her skin was slightly tanned, as if she'd seen more of the sun than he had recently. There was a mark on her right shoulder, an area where the skin was lighter than its surroundings.

A star.

With a sudden jolt, Rei realized that he knew this girl.

"Oh," he said, stepping forward with his hands in his pockets. "It's the loudmouth."

She sniffed, rubbing at her eyes with the back of her hand before looking up at him. Her eyes were clearly red-rimmed, but the glare she shot him stopped him from mentioning it. A memory flashed through his mind, a girl from his childhood, back when he was still nothing more than a toddler. A teal-haired girl in a light blue dress, with gray eyes and a grin. She'd moved away when he was young, something about her parents wanting to travel the world. A name came to him. Her name.

"Oh," she said, her voice thick as she looked him over. "It's the scaredy-cat."

He smiled, taking another step towards her. Now that she was facing him, he could see the tag pinned just over her heart, in big block letters.

WEAPON.

Her eyes moved over him as well, taking in the tag pinned to his own chest before moving back to his face.

"So, you're a meister, huh?" she asked, trying to sound casual despite the way she was still on the ground, the thickness in her voice that told him her throat was still tight. "Bet you're just dying to have a weapon like me, aren't you? That's why you're here, isn't it? To cry and beg for me to partner with you?"

I'm not the one crying, Rei thought, his eyes looking over her. You are.

But she knew that as well as he did.

So he smiled instead, extending a hand out to her. "Yeah," he said. "That's exactly right."

The girl sniffled again, looking up at him with baleful eyes. They moved from his face to his outstretched hand and back to his eyes and he felt something. A tremor somewhere deeper than his skin, deeper than his heart. His soul.

"When it feels right, you'll know," his mother had said.

He knew. He wondered if she did too.

"Well," she said, tentatively shifting her closed fist out from under her. "I was gonna go solo. But I guess I can take pity on you. Just this once."

She reached up, her fingers hesitantly uncurling from their fist as they reached his outstretched hand. The tips of her fingers brushed against his and then, as if she was making a decision, her hand suddenly surged forward, clasping his fully.

He smiled, tightening his grip as she used it to pull herself to her feet. They stood for a while, hands clasped, facing each other eye-to-eye. Her face broke into a grin and he found himself returning it.

She spoke first. "Long time no see, Rei."

"Yeah," he said. "Long time no see, Ayame."

They reported back to Sid-sensei, then spent the rest of the allotted time catching up on lost years. Ayame told the story about how her parents decided to move away from Death City and travel the globe, chasing down monsters and lost souls and doing difficult missions for the DWMA. She'd lived pretty much everywhere in the eight years since he'd seen her, she said, seen pretty much everything.

"And what about you?" Ayame asked, as they were having lunch in the shade of one of the training forest's trees, watching the dwindling crowd of first-years still trying to pair off. "Stayed in Death City?"

"Stayed in Death City," Rei confirmed, eating the sandwich his mother had packed for him. "Mom has a class to teach and Dad has to stay close in case he's needed, so, y'know." He shrugged one shoulder indifferently.

"Cool," said Ayame. "So I guess you know all the places to be, huh? I haven't been here in forever. I don't know where anything is at all."

"Well, there's not really places to be," said Rei, taking a bite. "It's just Death City. I mean, it's not really boring, but you know."

"Well, you won't be bored now," said Ayame, flopping back down on the grass. "I'm back in town." She smiled contentedly, closing her eyes.

"Yeah," said Rei with a smile. "I guess I won't be."

He finished off his sandwich.

A few hours later, Sid came back for the class, gathering the EAT students into one of the empty classrooms, Class Moonless Night according to the sign posted on the door. He had them take seats in the amphitheater style classroom, standing at the bottom with a clipboard. Once they were all seated, he cleared his throat, raising the clipboard in front of him and beginning to speak in a booming voice.

"Alright," he said. "I've got the list of names and partners for this year's EAT class. If you don't hear your name, come up to the front and I'll try and fix it for you. That's the kind of man I was. Ready? Listen close."

He cleared his throat.

"Rhythm Altair and Raimu Kitazawa."

A pair of girls in the front of the room grinned, raising their hands.

"Morgan Fay and Cassandra Crane."

Somewhere in the back of the room, Rei saw a dark-haired girl raise a hand slowly, seated next to a blond girl with a pair of light pink headphones on. The other girl was smiling.

"Clark Greysteil and Vayne Damocles."

"Yo," said Vayne, from two rows above Rei. He was leaning back in his seat, his feet up on the desk. Vayne's meister, another blond with a pair of glasses on his face, smiled uncertainly and raised his hand.

Sid checked their names off the list, then glanced back down at the clipboard. He paused over the next pair of names, then looked up, scanning the classroom.

"Rei Evans and Ayame Star."

Ayame picked Rei's hand up and raised it along with hers, her face breaking into a grin.

The roster for Class Moonless Night appeared on her desk a few minutes after class ended, sealed in a brown paper envelope. Maka did her best to resist, but found that she couldn't help herself. She picked it up, telling herself that she just wanted to start learning her students' names and she wasn't abusing her privilege as faculty at all. Her eyes scanned the list eagerly, but she forced herself to give each name and partnership an equal amount of consideration instead of just doing what she wanted to do, which was search frantically for Rei's name.

Still, she couldn't help the grin that appeared on her face when she saw it.

Maka set the piece of paper back down on her desk, reaching for her phone. She dialed a number, holding it to her ear. It rang twice, before a feminine voice on the other end said "Hello?"

"Tsubaki-chan," said Maka, smiling. "I have so much to tell you."

A/N: On names: Rei means 'spirit/soul', fitting considering what his father's name is and what his grandfather's name is. Ayame means 'iris'.

What did you think? Please let me know in a review!