A/N- Oh look, another Reverb fic. This time it's a triple collaboration! Myself and fellow author l0chn3ss teamed up to write a story inspired by our artist, LunaiLegends, whose Reverb art was definitely a very unique AU, who drew some KiMa art based on the Korean fantasy golf game Pangya, so it was a wild ride to build a plot as good as our artist deserves!

As you will shortly see, we didn't nearly do the art justice (I'm blaming time constraints, frankly, because Lunai's idea would have been best served by a fantasy epic and Ness and I ran just a bit short of time lol), but here is our humble offering, nonetheless! MASSIVE shoutout to Jak and ProMa, who saved our bacon with their fabulous beta work.


The sun had slipped under the horizon less than a quarter of an hour before, but darkness was replacing the smoky twilight with unnatural swiftness. The stars were beginning to come alive in the sky above, but they seemed muted and sickly, as if seen through a black veil. They were faint enough that, despite how dark the moonless night was growing, they barely reflected at all in the shallow water of the ponds that lay scattered across the forested landscape below.

Beside one of those small lagoons, a woman sat alone by the edge of the water, her bare feet dabbling on the surface. She was built on a small scale, bony almost to the point of being gaunt save for her round face. Her silver hair shone far brighter in the darkness than the dimmed stars above her, and her dark eyes were wide and watchful, belying the careless swish of her feet in the water. A tiny island, perfectly flat and green, lay at the center of the lake just a few yards away, and the little plot of land seemed to be illuminated by the same strange radiance she herself possessed.

After some time spent in silence, her darting eyes froze in their skittering, locking onto a particular patch of darkness beneath the trees. She went very still, not even seeming to breathe.

Abruptly, a narrow flare of orange fire erupted just north of one of the massive black pines that fringed the clearing, a light even more brilliant than the shining silver hair of the silent watcher. The flames faded quickly, leaving the pale gleam of her hair once again the brightest light in the clearing, but in its wake, a second woman was left behind.

The first woman shielded her eyes at the first sight of the fire, visibly relaxing when she took in the form of her friend who'd appeared in front of her. She was far taller and much more curvaceous. Her hair also gleamed, unnaturally bright in the dimness, but where the other woman's long, straight locks glimmered like the stars, her night-dark curls seemed to shimmer with a violet inner fire, like the iridescence of a raven's feather.

"That was too flashy," the shorter woman said, standing up in the shallows. "We might not have very long as it is, no need to attract any more attention. I want to get out of this alive, thank you very much!"

The other woman waved a casual hand. "You worry too much, Eruka. If you're prepared, we can be done in five minutes. You are ready, right? You got the dimple open?"

Eruka gave the other woman a withering look. With a small gesture from her hand, another source of silver-white light sprang up from a small, circular hole directly in the center of the islet in the pond. The beam of light, as easily discernible in the gloom as if it had been passing through a cloud of chalk, shot upwards before the clarity of the beam faded out and dispersed into the surrounding air in a scattering of tiny silver sparks.

"Have a little faith in me, Blair! I may not be as powerful as you, but even I can break through a seal as weak as that one was. Clearly Asura was in a rush when he was here. It only took me ten minutes at the most. But what about you? Did you get it?"

Blair gave a decidedly feline grin. She reached into the bag she carried and produced an orb about the size of a walnut. It seemed to burn from within, a pulsing lavender fire shot through occasionally with sparks of creamy orange.

"It's so attuned to you already…" Eruka breathed.

Blair nodded, and even her bravado was tuned down into respectful complacency. "It is a soul ball, after all," she said. "It isn't like your everyday object."

"Are you sure it's wise to waste it? These aren't exactly a dime a dozen, like you said, and we're going to need every last one we've got if Asura's to be defeated."

"They're all useless without someone to wield them, Kitten."

Eruka bit her lip nervously, but there was a capitulation in her eyes. "How did you get it, anyway? I can't imagine they would just let you walk—"

"Oh but they did," Blair said smugly. "Those darling Thompson girls let Blair right in once they knew what Blair was there for."

"You're kidding!"

She grinned at Eruka's skeptical look. "Blair certainly is not! They've seen me once or twice before. Besides, they're worried about Kid. How could they not be? Strikers' loyalty and all that. And the way things stand now, it's not as if he's actually able to use the balls himself. Asura could spit right in the poor thing's eye and Blair doubts he'd even blink."

Eruka nodded, though her expression was more scornful than sympathetic. "No help coming from him, definitely. You're right, we need someone from the outside, someone not so tethered to the world."

Blair's self-satisfied grin was back. "We've had this conversation before. And aren't you the one who said we have a time limit?"

The other woman's expression flipped from mildly annoyed to outright fearful. "You're right, we have to get moving. Give me the ball."

Blair tossed it to her, handling such a precious object so carelessly that Eruka would have punched her, if she weren't too busy catching the fragile soul ball. Immediately, the previously violet and orange flame faded into a burning black, shot through with the occasional flare of silver. Eruka's entire body was suffused with a jittering tingle— creatures such as Blair and herself weren't meant to touch something like this for long.

She stepped out onto the black surface of the pond, scattering starlight around her and leaving just a hint of a ripple across the glass-like water. She glanced over her shoulder and sighed heavily at the sight of Blair shedding her iridescent robe.

"Do you really have to do that?" she asked, one hand fiddling nervously with the seams of her own soft white skirt as she tried not to sneak too many peeks at her companion's disrobed body.

She shrugged. "Not all fairies can walk on water just like that, after all. Blair doesn't want her clothes to get wet."

Blair dropped the last article of clothing on the shore, now fully nude, and Eruka looked away with a blush, thinking to herself that the other woman's complete lack of self-consciousness was both a blessing and a curse.

She turned to walk across the water, so as not to be subjected to the frustrating sight of Blair doing the breaststroke across the pond.

Once they had both arrived again on dry land, they approached the little round hole in the very center of the islet. Eruka squatted down, knees bowed outwards like a frog's, and peered down into the hole, squinting slightly against the light that issued from it. "You're sure this is going to work?"

Blair knelt opposite her, and in the radiance that shone between them, the velvet amethyst light that twinkled in her hair spread to the rest of her, shining out through her skin as though she had gone translucent. She was always attractive, but now she was a different kind of beautiful, so much that she was hard to look at.

Eruka wondered if she looked the same.

"Do you want to do the honors?" she asked.

Blair shrugged and reached through the beam of light to take the ball from Eruka, and as it passed between them, the colors of their souls mingled for just a breath of time.

"So what exactly do we need to do, anyway?" she asked, once the jittering in her bones had subsided.

"Just putting it in the dimple will do," Blair said. "The world knows better than we do what kind of champion it needs."

She dropped the brightly-burning orb down into the hole with very little ceremony, and it vanished. For a moment, nothing happened…

And then the light rising from the dimple turned from silver to gold and flared up so brightly that they both threw up their hands to shield their eyes; the light was accompanied by a wash of intense heat that had both women scooting backwards to avoid being scorched.


It was frustrating enough, Maka thought, to be the third wheel on somebody else's date. What made an uncomfortable situation positively obnoxious was when the other two people at the table flatly refused to concede that it was a date.

Admittedly, Kim was still so deep in the closet she'd found Narnia, so maybe it wasn't so surprising that she kept insisting on bringing other friends along on these little "outings" with Jacqueline. Maka would've almost believed that Kim really was straight, except for the fact that she wouldn't stop flirting. And flirting wasn't really Kim's thing, unless she wanted something from someone— and even then, she had to want whatever it was really badly. No, Maka was entirely certain that Kim was deep in denial, and all this doe-eyed giggling and touching Jackie lightly on the arm or hand every five minutes was her way of trying to get what she wanted.

Specifically, a girlfriend. Not that Kim seemed to be consciously aware of that.

Maka would have found it amusing if she didn't feel so bad for Jacqueline. The poor girl had carried a torch for her friend for years, and it was only recently that she'd been given even a glimmer of hope for reciprocation. God bless the miracle of bisexuality… and damn Kim's own obliviousness! It made Maka want to bash her face against the tabletop in frustration.

Well, the situation would boil over in time, and hopefully it would leave both of them with a happy relationship— and Maka without the dubious honor of having to chaperone her friends on their Very Platonic Outing.

At least they were actually doing something fun this time. The little local coffee shop/bookstore Jacqueline had been dying to go to (and Kim had enthusiastically asked to visit when she found this out) was adorable, and Maka was enjoying the cozy atmosphere and peach iced tea.

It wasn't enough compensation, however, for having to witness Kim tapping Jacqueline on the shoulder and laughing loudly. "You're so funny, Jackie! Isn't she funny, Maka?"

Maka felt a bit nauseated by the spectacle. It was definitely time to get out of here before she smashed their faces together, anything to step up the timetable on resolving this romantic tension. "Yeah, you're right, Kim. Listen, guys, this has been fun, but I really need to go."

"What?" Kim asked, looking up at Maka with something close to panic on her face. "But you said you had the whole afternoon free!"

Shit. "Well… um… I just remembered that my dad wants to teach me to golf!" That much, at least, was true. "I'd been trying to forget about it because, well, you know me, too much time alone with my papa is hazardous to his health, but I just got a text from him just now. So, bye-bye!" And with that, she slid off her stool and all but fled for the door, trying not to imagine her friends' bemused faces as they stared after her.

The coffee place had been located in an old Victorian house, gutted and refitted with new woodwork. Maka bounced down the steps and up the slate walkway to the low, wrought-iron gate that surrounded the property. After she'd pushed it open and stepped out onto the cement sidewalk beyond, she breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

Ugh, so awkward.

There was something about witnessing the romantic entanglements of her friends that had bothered her for a long time now— maybe since high school, even. Perhaps it was because she'd never managed to make a relationship last for more than two dates and one extremely awkward make-out session. It wasn't that she wasn't interested in dating, she just couldn't seem to find anyone she wanted to date. And in the face of that, watching her friends in the bloom of a new romance (or, even worse, getting all lovey-dovey once a relationship had been established) was incredibly frustrating.

She started off walking down the lane, enjoying the fresh spring air and the dappled sunlight filtering down onto the sidewalk through the canopy of maple trees that lined the sidewalk.

Maybe I really will go visit Papa, she thought. Might as well get it out of the way…

Even as the thought occurred to her, something in the atmosphere changed. She paused, trying to figure out what it was that had put her senses on alert. The air around her warmed rapidly, the temperature rising from the breezy comfort of a late April afternoon to the sudden burning heat of August, and then hotter still. She broke out in inexplicable goosebumps, and her hair rose around her, sticking to her cheeks and shoulders with sudden static charge. The world around her shimmered as light became solid, surrounding her with a syrupy honey-gold shot through with sparks of brilliant twinkling fire.

She opened her mouth to speak, but before she had even finished drawing a breath, she felt her body dissolve, and the world went black.


A/N part 2- Alright, if you've managed to struggle through this far, we have a Very Important Message For The Reader!

ResBang (Resonance Bang, aka the Soul Eater fandom bigbang event, and Reverb's counterpart) is coming around again. It's an event that's open to all authors and artists, of all ships (or no ships at all, for that matter), skill levels, and inspirations. I'm not modding for Resbang like I am for Reverb so I really have no authority to speak as anything but another enthusiastic member of the fandom, but there's been a push lately in these big fandom events for more ship/character diversity, and I'm a huge fan of that whole concept. So if KiMa is your thing (and if you clicked in to read this I'm assuming it is XD) and you'd like to take the opportunity to represent your ship, then maybe you could check out the ResBang info and see if it's something you'd be interested in participating in?

There's a link to the ResBang infopost on my profile riiiiiight at the very top so that you can check it out and see if that's something you'd like to write or create art for. (And even if you don't... tell your friends, get the word out, so that nobody misses the chance to participate!) Sign ups are open until August 1st, so you've got time to think it over.

ALRIGHT, THE PSA IS OVER, IT'S BACK TO FIC-LAND NOW