A/N: This is kind of a mash-up of the first three days of SoMa week, because I didn't have enough time to write out three fics. I guess that could also explain why I made this so long. Anyways, I hope you enjoy it!
Disclaimer: I do not own Soul Eater.
"Let's try not to get lost this time, okay?" Soul whispers into the darkness.
His hand is warm in hers as they tiptoe through the warehouse in search of the kishin eggs. Maka tries to determine what the building was used for before it was abandoned, but it's too dark to read the printing on the sides of the large crates that are stacked haphazardly around the building. It smells like sawdust, and just as Maka is about to sneeze her nose is pinched between Soul's thumb and forefinger. "We need to be quiet, too," he mutters indignantly. She knows that, but refrains from releasing a snippy comment and settles for a curt nod of the head.
They're both stressed. It's the fourth mission they've been on this week and Maka and Soul are exhausted. The meisters and weapons of Spartoi have been given the toughest assignments lately because of their skill level, and a cult of women eating human souls is a mission for only the most advanced. Kid, Liz, and Patty are somewhere else in the city, presumably finishing off the leader of the cult at that very moment, and Black Star and Tsubaki are back at the academy since Black Star was injured too badly in the last mission that the pair went on. This left Soul and Maka to collect the souls of the last two members of the cult tonight. The women had run into the warehouse ahead of Maka, and in the darkness she lost them.
Maka's Soul Perception led her to believe that they were close, but stacks of crates and old machinery that filled the warehouse had turned the building into a maze. She could have used Soul to slice through the stacks of crates and towards the soon-to-be kishins, but she feared that knocking over one crate would cause an entire collapse. She had Soul transform and walk beside her, because his handle was too long for her to hold him horizontally in the tight spaces.
Weaving through the ceiling-high stacks of wooden crates, they hear a loud crash coming from up ahead. With a simple squeeze of her hand, Soul transforms into a scythe. Maka holds Soul upright and weaves through more stacks until she reaches a kind of clearing. The boxes have been pushed towards the walls, leaving a space big enough for her to swing her weapon freely. She smiles, and through their Resonance she can feel Soul perk up at the sight of the clearing. If they can lure the kishin eggs here, Maka can finish them off easily. Then they can go home and finally relax.
They hear a crash again and Maka wheels to the left to see one of the women from the cult come forward out of the labyrinth of crates. There's blood running down her forehead and dripping off of her crooked nose, and her eye is swollen shut. She must have gotten caught in a collapse, Maka thinks. The large cloud of sawdust that is still settling behind the woman confirms Maka's suspicions. The woman's good eye widens in surprise when she sees Maka standing before her, as she had probably assumed that she had lost the meister and weapon for good once she and her accomplice had escaped to the warehouse.
She turns to run, but Maka isn't having any of that.
"Don't even think about it!" she yells, running full tilt at the woman, scythe in hand. The woman tries to return to the relative safety of the stacked crates, but she's limping from her injuries, and Maka easily outruns her. She reaches the boxes before the cult woman, and turns to face her after effectively blocking her path. Maka's smirk glints in the darkness and she runs for the woman, holding Soul out next to her, ready to slice. When Maka's within ten feet of the fleeing woman, and she draws her weapon back to attack and—
Yank!
Out of nowhere Maka can feel herself being violently pulled backwards by her weapon. Did Soul's blade get caught on something? She turns around to see a simple rope with a weight attached to the end wound around the top of Soul's handle. She squints into the darkness and sees that at the other end of the rope is the other woman that they had lost track of. "Stay away from my sister!" the woman cries out, and Maka has a hard time telling if the woman's voice is trembling or if that's just how she naturally speaks. The woman doesn't look scared, she looks angry.
"Make a decision, Maka. You need to attack." She can sense Soul's worry. Even though this is one of the easier battles they've had this week, there are two people to keep track of instead of just one, and the reduced visibility isn't helping. Maka whips her scythe back violently, and the rope that had woman had been using to hold back Soul snaps. Maka rushes for the angry woman. She's more of a threat, considering she's still trying to fight rather than flee like her sister.
When she gets close enough, Maka swipes at her feet, trying to knock her off balance, or if she's lucky, knock her over. The woman doesn't fall for it at all, instead jumping up way higher than Maka expected, landing on top of a stack of crates. She begins hopping from stack to stack, running on top of the boxes to get away from the meister.
"You've got to be kidding me!" Maka yells, slamming Soul's handle into the ground and using it to vault herself on top of the crates to follow the woman. She wants this to be over. She wasn't anticipating another chase.
Maka's gaining ground on the woman, who's strangely much faster than Maka would have guessed. She's finally close enough to the panting woman to hit her. She sees an opportunity to strike when the distance between two stacks of crates causes the cult woman to falter. Not holding back, she swings Soul as hard as she can the woman in the middle of mid-jump, only to….miss?
The woman is gone. Maka lands in an unceremonious heap on the crate that the woman should have been jumping to. She rolls over and turns around. "What happened?" Soul asks her. "Where did she go?"
Make has no idea. One moment she was swinging at the woman, prepared to hit her square in the back and kill her, and the next she was lying on a splintered wooden crate, confused. The woman had vanished. "Just great," Maka mutters, using Soul to prop herself onto her feet. Where'd the woman go?
Out of nowhere, one of the women has jumped up onto the group of boxes that Maka is on, and is throwing something at her. She dodges as best she can, surprised by the attack, but feels searing pain in her left side and blood begin to trickle down. "What was that?" Maka asks off-handedly, not taking her eyes off of the woman.
"A knife," Soul replies. "It sliced through your side, but the bleeding isn't bad." There's still concern laced in his words, and Maka tries her best to soothe his thoughts through their Resonance that she won't let anything get that close to her again.
She squints into the darkness and sees that this is the first woman, the one who was injured by the box collapse. The blood is still wet on her face, but something is different about her. The woman rushes forward, and in the blink of an eye she is face to face with Maka. What the hell? Maka doesn't have time to maneuver Soul to slice her, and instead rams the woman in stomach with the top of her weapon. The woman falls of the stacks with an oomph! and Maka jumps off after her. Giving her no time to think, Maka brings Soul down on the woman, stabbing her in the—shit—leg. Maka was aiming for the chest, but the woman scrambled backwards at the last second. Oh well, Maka thinks, she's not getting away again. Her other injuries might not be affecting her anymore, but there's no way she can ignore a stab wound.
But it seems she can. The woman stands up and lands a deft kick on Maka, square in the face. Maka's vision tunnels and for a second she can't see anything at all. She hears Soul cry out her name, but a moment later it's gone. She shakes her head and opens her eyes. Maka's on her butt, the woman coming at her again, and she can't find her scythe anywhere.
"Soul!" Her weapon doesn't respond, and while she wants to go search for wherever he had landed when he flew out of her hand, she has to focus on the woman attacking her. Maka jumps to her feet and lands an uppercut with her right fist, causing the woman to fall backwards into the teetering crates around them. Maka hopes for a collapse, but is disappointed when the boxes don't fall on the woman. She's thinking about another way to attack when she notices the woman's leg. There's still blood on it, but the stab wound that Maka had inflicted is gone.
"What's the matter, girly?" the woman taunts. "Finally catching on?" She flexes her jaw where Maka's punch hit her and smiles darkly, rushing at Maka and hitting her square in the stomach. Maka tries as hard as she can to stand, but crumbles in on herself from the pain.
"How—?"
"You wanna know why I'm not hurt?" Maka supposes that the woman at one point in her life might have been pretty. She has long black hair and a slim figure with curves in all the right places, something Maka lacks. But the human souls the woman had consumed had made her hair limp and greasy, and there is a slight hunch to her back and crookedness in her nose that ruins her former beauty. The ugly woman grins wickedly and points to the leg that Maka was so blatantly staring at. "You can hurt me as much as you want, but it only makes me stronger. Slash me with your little friend and you are only adding fuel to the fire, my dear. And it'll sure take a lot more than a couple bumps and bruises to finish me off."
That's not good. Maka's going to need Witch Hunter to finish the women off, but Soul's nowhere to be found. A meister is only as strong as her weapon, and without one, Maka feels useless.
Maka stands as quickly as she can, the pain in her stomach from the last hit still flaring, and the knife wound she took to her side starts to burn. Her only choice is to retreat until she can find Soul, and so she starts to run through the labyrinth of stacked crates.
"Don't even think about it!" the hag woman yells, imitating what Maka had said earlier in their fight. The roles are reversed now, and just as Maka had before, the woman wheels around Maka, much faster than the injured meister, and blocks her path. Maka spins to the right and chooses another path, but as she runs through it she notices the path getting narrower and narrower until she has to turn sideways in order to fit. Too quickly, the woman has caught up with her and slams her hard in the side with her foot. Hard as Maka tries to stay upright, the woman has hit her in the side with the knife wound, and down Maka goes again.
Except this time, Maka lands at the foot of a huge stack of crates. Her eyes dart up just in time to see the sister of the hag woman standing on the wall of wooden boxes behind her, having resurfaced from wherever she was hiding, and with a defiant kick the crates tumble down upon Maka.
Everything goes black.
Soul can't remember the last time he's panicked this much.
Maka's gone Maka's gone she's alone without a weapon she fucking THREW ME where is she where is she Maka needs me and I'm not there fuck fuck FUCK
He shouldn't be blaming himself for this but he is. The second he flew out of Maka's hand he should have transformed and found his way back to her. But he was an idiot and he waited. He didn't realize how far he had been flung and the fool waited for his meister to run over and pick him back up. But she didn't and in this maze of wooden crates Soul has no idea where he is. He runs through the path continuous swearing, his blood pressure rising and rising with the fear that his meister is alone against two kishin eggs with no weapon. He wishes he had Soul Perception like Maka to help guide him through the warehouse, but he doesn't and he continuously hates himself for being lost.
He hears screaming and takes off with more speed than he had before, rushing in between stacks of boxes and vaulting himself over the once that are short enough to jump over. His heart is racing a mile a minute and he's running faster than he has in his life but he needs to go faster.
He sees a large cloud of sawdust and a ton of splintered boxes ahead of him and rushes towards them in search of Maka. He yells her name but gets no response. Soul's eyes frantically search the wreckage for his partner or either of the two women. Out of the corner of his eye he sees the color red.
His anxiety spikes to new levels as he turns around. He's afraid of what he'll see. Images of his meister's blood smeared among the wreckage hits him harder than any attack, and he almost throws up at the thought of what he's going to find.
His entire body uncoils in relief when he sees two souls floating in the air. The crimson kishin eggs are like beacons among the splintered wreckage, and Soul has never been so relieved.
"Maka, how did you do it?" He's so happy that the threat is gone, and spins around in search of his meister. Still no response. "Maka?"
He hears a weak whine from beneath the splintered wood and his heart drops again. He gingerly steps over as much of the broken crates as possible and makes his way to where he heard Maka's voice. Pulling away pieces of wood, he unveils Maka's face and torso.
Her cheek is swollen from the kick she took the face, and there's blood matted in her hair. Her black trench coat is trashed with pieces of splintered wood, the entire thing ripped to shreds. Intense worry clouds Soul's eyes as he gently pats his partner's face. "Maka?" He hates how shaky is voice sounds. "Can you hear me?"
Slowly, her eye lids flutter and moss green irises greet him and, bless her, she smiles. Soul's knees wobble and give out completely as he crumbles to the ground beside her. His forehead rests on her shoulder for a moment, and he has to take a moment to get his breathing under control. She's alive, she's okay.
"Do you need help getting out?" he asks her after a moment, and when she nods he begins removing more broken wood from her body, trying to free her pinned arms. When he sees her shoulders begin to squirm, he holds out a hand so she can reach up through the remainder of the rubble and he can pull her out. "How did you manage to kill them?" he wonders as he turns once again to look at the floating souls behind them.
When he turns around to help her up he gets his answer. Where he expected to see two scrawny arms, probably bloodied up from her recent battle, he sees two scythes protruding from her shoulders. He takes a step backwards and he tries to process what's before him, but his mind his spinning.
And sitting before him, looking equally surprised, is Maka. She gapes at the blades that replace her limbs and from where Soul is standing a couple feet away, he can hear her breathing become erratic. "Maka?" he asks quietly, "What happened with the two women?"
She doesn't answer. She's looking at the scythes with eyes the size of saucers and he sees tears forming in the corners of them. Shit.
He stoops down beside her quietly and places his hands on her shoulders. "Maka, look at me." She does as he commands, turning to look into his eyes. She's shaking, and Soul can sense that she's about two seconds away from breaking down completely. He tries to soothe her, rubbing small circles along her shoulders with his thumbs. He doesn't understand what's going on, but calming Maka down is his first priority. "You're going to be okay. Everything will be alright. There's no more danger."
But she shaking her head from side to side, eyes once again on the scythe limbs she now has. "I-I-I-I don't know w-w-where they came from. I b-b-blacked out when the boxes fell and I don't remember anything." He frightened stutter is ripping him apart. He needs a new comfort tactic and fast.
"So I guess your scythe gene isn't dormant after all," Soul says with a smile. She stops shaking and looks up at him, confused. "We knew you had scythe blood in you; your father is a Death Scythe after all." She doesn't look as afraid now, and Soul takes that as a positive sign. "We'll figure this out, Maka. The important thing is that you somehow managed to kill those two and you're safe now." He looks at her quizzically for a moment. "Do you know how to transform back?"
The tears that had started forming in Maka's eyes had spilled over during his little speech, and they leave streaks of clean skin amidst all the dirt and dust covering her face. Her eyes continue to shine with water as she shakes her head, and Soul grimaces. He slips his arm underneath her knees and puts his other one behind her to support her back. He lifts her out of the rubble and sets her against a single crate, brushing the dust away from her ruined coat.
"I've never had to explain how to do this before," Soul says, looking at his hands. Transforming from weapon to human form has become so natural to him that it's as easy as snapping his fingers or raising his hand. He's thinking of a way to explain it when Maka speaks.
"Does it hurt?" Her voice is small, still scared of the foreign objects protruding from her shoulders, nervous about what it all means.
"No," Soul says thoughtfully. "You barely even feel it."
He puts his hand on the scythe where her left arm should be. The pattern on her scythes is similar to the pattern he has when in weapon form, but instead of being black and red, hers are black and silver. The blade is cool to the touch as he rests both hands on it. "You just need to remember what your human form feels like."
She's so unsure of herself that her voice is barely above a whisper. "Soul, I don't think I know how." She lifts her scythes, testing the weight of them.
His fingertips run gently along the patterns on her blades. He takes in a shuddering breathe. "You just have to remember what's it's like to have flesh and bone. Start from your shoulders and move downwards."
His fingers touch the side of the blade connecting to her body. "Your shoulders are small, and lately they've been sagging a bit from all of the stress that we've had to deal with. But they're strong, too. They're always set with determination, showing just how much you much you care about everything you do, and how willing you are to keep trying until you succeed."
His crimson eyes are practically burning holes in her scythes. He refuses to look into her eyes as his hands gradually move down her blades. "Your arms look pretty scrawny, but I've felt your biceps before, and there are actually some wiry muscles in there," he says with a smirk. "I talked to Black Star, and he told me about the times when you used to go over to his and Tsubaki's place and weight train with him." She lets out a little bubble of laughter, embarrassed that Soul has found out, but clinging to the happy memory nonetheless." His hands continue their path toward the tips of the scythe. The blade is starting to become warmer now.
"Your hands are the best part, though. Long fingers that would be perfect for piano, but have never played a single note; palms that still have faint scars on them from where you burned them on my handle over a year ago, where you refused to let me go even though our wavelengths weren't matching." She notices the faint hint of red on his cheeks as he continues talking, but says nothing. Soul doesn't even notice that she's staring at him.
"Despite the fact that you're constantly using your hands to wield me, they're still as soft as ever. You wear your gloves to prevent callouses from forming, and as far as I can tell, it's been working." A smile settles on Soul's face. "Your fingers always get pruny when it's your turn to do dishes, because you stay at the sink longer than necessary and sing under your breath." Somewhere along the line he had closed his eyes sometime while he was talking, visualizing the hands of his partner. "There's always a book in them, and sometimes when you're reading your hands grip the sides of the book like they're the only things keeping you tethered to the Earth. You only do that when you're reading action or romance, though.
"And your hands are always there to help me, too. They're strong, just like you, and they help to pull me back whenever I get afraid that the madness will take over. You use them to support me, and all of our friends, in fact. Your hands are amazing, Maka."
While a sharp shake of his head, he breaks out of his trance. He opens his eyes and looks down, and Maka snaps back to attention, looking down with him. Her human arms have taken the place of where scythes had previously been, and her hands are held in Soul's larger ones. Maka gasps in surprise. She hadn't even noticed the transformation; she was too fixated on Soul's words and the peculiar look he had on his face when he was speaking.
His thumbs rub across her knuckles. "See? Painless."
She looks at him with a kind of wonder. All the things that Soul had said, did he mean them? Or was he just trying to calm her down? He seemed serious enough, even happy, while he spoke.
"What are you staring at?" He asks suddenly.
Maka's eyes widen and she looks away. "Nothing. Help me up, will you?"
Once again, Soul's hands are covering Maka's as he helps haul her to her feet. She gasps from the pain in her side, and immediately an arm snakes around her waist while the other guides her arm around Soul's shoulders. "We'll get you fixed up soon, don't worry."
He's about to lead her out of the warehouse when Maka grabs a fistful of his snowy hair and tugs. "Oi! What gives?"
"The souls. We went through all of this trouble; don't leave them there without swallowing them!"
With Maka still in tow, Soul walks over to the red souls floating in the air like crimson lamps. His hand encloses around one, but instead of eating it, he stops to look at Maka.
"You know, technically these souls aren't mine. You're the one who defeated those hags, and you did it as your own weapon. Don't you want to eat them?" He looks at her and smiles, but it doesn't touch his eyes. "Ninety-seven more and one witch's soul and you could be your own Death Scythe."
It never ceases to amaze him how out of nowhere she manages to Maka Chop him. He has no idea how she obtained the book in her fingers, but he feels the spine connect with his cranium with an all-too-familiar pain. He turns to face his meister, who has her hands bunched into fists resting on her hips, expression defiant. "Ow! Jeez, Maka! What did I say?!"
Her expression relaxes. She lifts herself up on her tiptoes and kisses him softly on the cheek. "You're my weapon, Soul Eater. That's not going to change, no matter what happens. And I'll always be your meister, right?"
He looks down and her, trying to hide the smile on his face and failing miserably. "Right." He grabs the souls and gobbles them up one at a time.
Once again, his hand is in hers as they walk out of the warehouse towards his bike. Their fingers are entwined together, and he squeezes her hand as they step out into the light of the rising sun.
A/N: Ta da! I was thinking about continuing it until they got back to the DWMA, where Lord Death would probably explain to Maka that her scythe form only seems to work when she's unconscious (like the final episode of the anime), but I figured this was a good way to finish it.
[insert passive aggressive statement telling you to review] That nifty little box is there for a reason folks! I need to know if it was wonderful and should be documented in some fanfic hall of fame, or if it was awful and I need to burn my computer. Only you can tell me!