Because even a character as silly as Excalibur deserves at least one serious story. Takes place sometime between the special episode/chapter with Hiro and the Book of Eibon arc. Please enjoy!

Disclaimer: I don't own Soul Eater, or anything that is canon. All things non-canon are probably mine, but even that's not a given. Soul Eater and all related things are property of Atsushi Ohkubo.

Summary: What might have been another boring day for Excalibur takes an odd turn with the appearance of a stranger with dead eyes and a very familiar book...

Ire and Shadows
By: Saya Moonshadow

Excalibur was, as usual, insanely bored, almost to the point of tears.

Back in the old days, it hadn't been like that. No, back then, there was always something to catch his ever-fleeting interest, always something for him to latch onto and come to terms with. The old days as Arthur's weapon were the best he'd ever had in his many long years, and he doubted he'd ever have as much fun again.

Ah. Such was the life, he supposed, of the most powerful Demon Weapon in existence.

There were times when he honestly wondered what it would be like to be a normal Weapon, or even just one who could pass for normal - his all-too-brief stint as the partner of that young man from Shibusen had shown him just how much fun normal Weapons seemed to have - but whatever he pretended, he knew he was anything but ordinary.

Then again, that was how he liked it. Powerful. Capable of bringing honor and glory to anyone who was willing to pay the price to wield him, though sadly, it seemed that the days of people willing to make enough of a sacrifice to make use of his power were also long gone.

Excalibur was powerful. Too powerful, perhaps. And there had once been a time when he himself had hated it, hated what that heretic had done to him, but time had a way of making old pains vanish. Well, perhaps not vanish (at least not entirely, in this case), but he had long grown used to what he was and accepted that there was no going back.

A shadow pierced the light that encompassed his glowing form in the dark cave he'd made his home.

Excalibur's interest piqued at the shape the shadow took, though he was honestly surprised at how long it took for the man to materialize properly. Up until the man was directly in front of him, his features remained hidden in utmost darkness, though the wavelength was one he knew quite well.

He hadn't felt this one in a very, very long time...

"Eibon!" he greeted, but then the man's face was thrown into relief, and he fell silent.

Not Eibon. Definitely not Eibon, but a dark-skinned young man wearing clothes that he supposed were considered "hip" (or whatever the term was in this day and age) and carrying a large book loosely under one arm. His face was an aloof mask, and his eyes were black, cold, and practically unfathomable.

Excalibur was confused for all of about five milliseconds before realizing that the man was obviously here for the same reason that everyone else came - to make a contract. Well, it couldn't be helped. When you were the most powerful Weapon in existence, you tended to get a little popular. Though no one seemed interested in paying the price for power anymore...kids in this century were all the same; they wanted power but weren't willing to give anything in return for it. And so what if he wanted just a few favors in return for allowing them to wield his most pristine self? It was their own fault if they couldn't handle it.

It was such a pity; he'd been so very sure that that Hiro kid would last...

"Excalibur," the man said, breaking the sword out of his thoughts.

He transformed quickly as he always did, eager to get the formalities out of the way. Though, to be honest, he absolutely did not like the look in this young man's eyes at all. For the first time in...gods only knew when, Excalibur found himself almost hoping for another rejection. Someone with eyes that cold and dead couldn't be up to any good.

"Excalibur, yes, I am Excalibur!" he said, twirling his cane and giving a short, jaunty bow. "You wish to make a contract, do you not, young man?"

"No, I am here-" the young man began, only to be cut off.

"My legend began in the twelfth century!" Excalibur announced, shoving his cane into his guest's face. From behind him he heard one of the fairies who shared the cave with him groan, and guessed they were probably making the infamous Face. He studiously ignored this. "Have you heard of it?"

"Yes, of course I-"

"FOOL!" The cane came dangerously close to poking one of the young man's cold, dead eyes out, though to his credit, the fellow didn't even blink. That was certainly a first. Not even Arthur had been that stoic.

"You could not have heard the whole story, for only I know of it!" Excalibur went on. "And in order to wield me, one must know-"

He was interrupted by the strange man's laughter.

That was another first. No one had ever interrupted Excalibur before.

Something cold threatened to run down his spine, but Excalibur, as he always had, ignored any negative sort of emotion. It was the only thing that had kept him sane after the heretic's experiments, and it had long since become a true part of his personality.

"Did you think I was here to wield you?" the man asked, laughter making his voice slightly shaky. "Did you truly?"

"FOOL!" And the cane was back. "What other reason would you have to come by my home? Everyone does at some point, you know, they all wish to wield my power!"

The man pushed the cane out of his face. "I am not here to wield you, Excalibur. I have no interest in wielding Demon Weapons."

The cold feeling was back, but this time, Excalibur was unable to fully ignore it. Those eyes were entirely too much like her eyes, back when she'd strapped him down to her metal table and ripped the soul out of the screaming body of another witch and then turned to him with those same dead eyes and reached-

The sword harrumphed, shoving the coldness away again. Ignore, ignore, ignore. He'd always been the best at ignoring the bad feelings, even back then, even Shinigami had said so. Out of all the eight, he'd been the one least affected by the dark that threatened their minds, because that would mean succumbing, and if there was one thing Excalibur did not do, it was succumb to anyone or anything he did not choose to.

Independence. He did what he wanted, and absolutely nothing else. Arthur had understood that, as had Hiro. He would never be forced to do something he didn't want ever again.

"Well, then, you are wasting my time," he said, taking his cane back and preparing to return to his Weapon form with a haughty sniff. "I do not sign autographs."

He heard the man laugh again, but the sound was a whole lot less amused this time. Though it was was what was said next that made him stop dead in his tracks.

"The Madness of Rage, huh..." the strange man murmured, and Excalibur actually froze for a moment.

"How did you know of that?" he asked, turning back to face the dead-eyed man, who merely smiled at him. He huffed, recovering his composure. "Madness of Rage, harrumph! I can bring nothing but joy to people's hearts! To call me anything but is to bring about-"

"Heresy?" the man asked softly, and Excalibur's heart nearly stopped. He'd been interrupted again, he knew, but that seemed infinitely less important than the word that had just been uttered. "The first of the Demon Weapons, created by Arachne Gorgon to be the perfect soldier...I admit, I've seen an awful lot of odd-looking creatures in my time, but you surpass them all. No other Weapon looks quite as odd as you."

"Odd?" Excalibur asked, feeling offended now. The man had insulted his pride, and that was simply not allowed. "Odd, you say? Odd, indeed! I am not odd; rather, it is the rest of them that are odd! I am the first, as you said, so therefore, I am the typical! FOOL!" He shoved his cane back into the man's face for good measure.

The man's left eye twitched as he pushed it away. "They were not kidding when they said you could drive even a saint to murder," he said, his voice almost a growl. And then he coughed, and his face went back to the aloof mask of before.

Yet another first. Usually when the rage took one of his guests, they would then proceed to fall into it face-first, and any potential for a partnership was ruined. That this man was able to ignore it and revert back to his default personality was definitely not normal.

"I don't care about other Demon Weapons," the man said, advancing towards him. Excalibur, however, stood his ground, as he always had. There was nothing to be afraid of. He banished fear from his mind, just as he banished all other negative emotions. And perhaps that had caused him to go a little strange in the head at some point, but anything was better than how he'd been after the heretic's experiments. And anyway, with his level of power, there was nothing to be afraid of in the first place. It wasn't like this mortal, this human, could do anything to him.

No more than had already been done, in any case.

"I don't care about Demon Weapons," the man repeated, drawing his book out from under his arm. If possible, Excalibur's eyes opened wider, the dark pupils contracting in surprise. It had been years - centuries, really - since he'd last seen the thing, and the idea of a mortal man getting a hold of it was simply shocking. Though, he now knew why he'd thought this man was Eibon at first. The book held his old friend's wavelength, even to this day, being his most prized creation and the one he'd expended most of his power on. The only question was how it had gotten from the grasp of its master into that of this strange human...

"But the first and most powerful Demon Weapon...that is a true prize." The man began to laugh, high and cold and dead as his eyes. "Along with being one of those Great Old Ones, that makes my current collection halfway complete. Only two remain after you. Thank you for staying in one place, by the way. It made it so much easier for me to find you."

Only two remained? Great Old Ones? There weren't any mortals who should have known about such things beyond perhaps the barest minimum, Excalibur knew - the knowledge was forbidden, along with that accursed book. Humans by nature were greedy, and would snatch up that kind of power in an instant. He would know. He'd met hundreds of them over the years, all searching for it, but none willing to pay the toll.

Worthless. All of them. In comparison to Arthur and the things they'd accomplished together, those people were nothing.

But what did "only two remain" mean? Had this man, by some miracle, managed to track down any of the others?

"The other two were so difficult," he went on. "I still don't know how I survived my confrontation with the first one; it was rather frustrating, I admit. I nearly lost myself halfway through. But lucky for me, I wasn't interested in what it had to offer, other than its own self. And now it is mine, just as you are."

His? His?

For the first time in eight centuries, Excalibur's eyes narrowed in anger. "You dare imagine that you are anywhere on par with me?" he growled, voice deepening with rage. He could hear the fairies who shared his cave squealing in fear as the light around him became harsh, though their squeals quickly became snarls.

He couldn't feel much - the light was strong and coming from him, and for some reason this only made him angrier. She dared to do this to him, Rage itself?

The light became harsher, and with his usual restraint gone, his madness infected those around him into a frenzy, snarling and screaming and destroying anything in their paths. One struck another down, and blood spurted from the wound like a fountain, but still the first did not let up in its assault. Not even the heretic herself was completely immune, as she screamed for her lackeys to calm themselves and restrain him.

The irony of it all made him laugh, even as his rage continued to grow. His form was now tiny and completely nonthreatening, looking more like a child's toy than one of the most powerful beings in the world - what, did she think that this was some kind of joke? Did she find it funny in some way to make him look like this? Something so small and so helpless-looking, personifying Rage itself?

Did she truly think that she had any idea what she was dealing with?

The man halted in his advance. "Not in the least," he said calmly. "But I don't want to be, either. I don't want your power, or to wield you. All I want is to have what's mine. Everything in this world belongs to me, and I will not give it up. You are mine as well. Everything is, or will be, eventually."

He opened the book, and it was in the split second before being sucked into it that Excalibur finally understood just what this man was. Not human at all. Not human, nor natural in the least.

Eibon, you have a lot of explaining to do, he thought, and the book closed.

END.

AN: Hm...a lot of fanon in here, I think...the anime went into certain parts of Excalibur's past in a more humorous way, but it's always occurred to me that if Demon Weapons came about roughly eight hundred years ago and if he was born or whatever in the twelfth century...that just might mean he was one of the original Weapons that Arachne created. That may even be why he's so different from all the others; because she hadn't perfected the process just yet. Or something like that. Along with it being heavily implied that he's one of the Great Old Ones, there's definitely a lot more to Excalibur than just being a pain in the ass. (Though he's definitely still annoying, haha.)

This isn't perfect, not at all - I think I made Excalibur too coherent. In canon, he's always going off on some sort of weird tangent, but here I kind of wanted to show just how unsettled he was by Noah. Well, I'll know better for next time than to try and get into the head of such a character.

I like to imagine that as soon as the book closed, Noah pulled the Face for at least the next hour, much to Gopher's confusion.