Resonate
…
The first time they resonate is clumsy. Un-refined and jagged and so unexpected the shock of it almost breaks their tenuous connection.
They are in an empty classroom. The still and the slight cold of the space register in Soul's mind and the thought flits over into her own.
She laughs at how he registers this detail amid the more important fact that they have become partners, mister and weapon. They are now functional, useful. Maka cannot help but allow herself to feel pride and intense joy at this first accomplishment.
Soul feels her laughter bubble over their connection, because it isn't so much a connection as it is a lack of privacy. He is in her mind and blood and heart, as he is sure she is in his. The feeling is simple, it is everything, all at once.
Resonance, he thinks (and knows she can hear his thought so he adds the slight hint of a smirk into it to hide his astonishment) is well named.
…
The last time they officially resonate is their graduation from the Academy. By then, the ceremony was mainly for show, more of a technicality than any real test of skill. The pair has already proven its efficiency.
Hours after the graduation ceremony Maka is called into the death room.
She arrives, walking into the blue skied room for the hundredth time since her arrival at the DWMA. She is greeted by Soul, Death the Kid and Lord Death himself.
"Where is Spirit?" Maka glances around again, sure this time that the scythe is absent.
There is a pause that settles in the space.
Lord Death floats to a spot behind his massive chair, resting his arms on its back and staring at the technician with vacant eyeholes. Maka looks the three of them over again, reigning in her confusion and instead nodding politely in Soul's direction.
The gesture is acknowledgment for him and pride on his behalf. He smiles back, taking a few steps in her direction before turning his focus to Kid.
"I have called you here to inform you that Soul is my scythe, not my father's." The young reaper had his hands clasped behind his back.
"While I very much respect my father, I am not him. To allow a weapon to operate without a technician is to deny them the opportunity to fully use their abilities."
Kid looked at the floor for a moment before continuing.
"With very few exceptions weapons are not misters, and misters are not weapons. There is a symmetry in a weapon and technician working together."
Maka heard Soul chuckle quietly beside her.
"While my father is gifted at wielding Spirit, I already have a very effective pair of weapons. So I called you here to offer you a job."
The young reapers eyebrow rose slightly.
"What?" Maka looked to Lord Death, who still stared at her with empty eyes. Soul steeped away from her, shoving his hands into his pockets.
"Soul needs a technician. I may be able to wield him properly one day, but there is no use in my doing so when I have two competent weapons of my own, and when there is already a highly capable technician available."
Soul smirked and shot a glance at Kid.
"That and he refused any other technician." The young reaper's tone was dry.
Maka could have sworn that she heard Soul murmur "damn straight" or something equivalent right on the heels of Kid's statement. She couldn't be sure.
This was just so odd.
Maka looked Death the Kid over, he stood with his heels together, toes slightly apart and arms crossed, head tilted slightly to the side. She resisted the urge to arc her own eyebrow and ask the young reaper if he was serious.
Instead she nodded slightly and said the two words that popped to mind.
"I accept."
…
"You have got to be joking."
Soul looked back and forth between Death the kid and Maka.
"She is not joking, and neither am I."
Death the kid set down his teacup and leveled and even stare at Soul.
"Ever since we knew she could transform into a weapon we have been curious about the extent of her abilities."
The young reaper made it sound so much more civilized than it did in Maka's own head.
She had been toying with the idea of being a weapon. She had the ability to do so. Though the extent she could control the ability was in question, so far, the only time she had managed to produce result was one exceptional occasion.
Other than that singular moment, she had not taken on any scythe form, not that she had attempted. Theory and reality were two different things after all.
"So we are asking you to assist, just this once. If it works, she will have satisfied her curiosity and you will have the satisfaction of switching places for a few hours. Mister and weapon in reverse."
Maka was impressed but slightly irked by the young reaper's suggestion. Though she knew the odds on her being able to repeat whatever she did during their battle with Asura were… well, they were slim to nonexistent. At best.
Soul was quiet for a few long moments.
"And if she cannot manage to get into weapon form, what then?"
Maka smiled, Soul knew her far too well to think she would let this go.
Death the Kid nodded once as a smirk crossed his features.
"Than she will let the issue rest for a while and we can regard whatever she did against Asura as a very well timed accident."
The next day Soul, Maka and the young reaper gathered in the backyard of Gallows mansion.
"Ready?" Soul asked, extending a hand to his partner.
She grasped his forearm tightly and let her eyes slide shut, falling into resonance with him.
It was familiar to her, the feeling of sharing and not sharing everything with Soul. They had nearly perfected their resonance and now, just out of the academy both of them could manipulate the link between them with ease.
It was slightly different to them now, this time he was still human and his awareness of his body being blood and bone (so much more fragile than steel) colored their minds in unison. She let a sliver of her irritation show through their link.
"Focus Maka." The young reaper breathed the command out almost silently.
The words fell on deaf ears, both were to lost in their resonance. Soul tempered her frustration with the flash of a memory of the first time he turned into a weapon.
She pushed it gently aside, she wasn't looking for memories to replay. She had something specific to find. She needed to get to the place she was in when she first became a weapon.
Soul felt her desperation and drew back a bit, silencing himself, watching her mind and soul flex slightly.
There.
She knew.
She figured it out.
It wasn't a place, it was a state. She was insane, she remembered, when she had gone into weapon form. Her only goal had been buried deep, way deep in her mind and soul. The goal had the singular force to come forward and drive her when all of her other functions and rational directors went dead.
Maka began to pull at memories and emotions, randomly and quickly filling her mind with too much. It was too fast, but she needed it to happen just so. She kept pulling, replaying faster and faster the things she had in her mind that hurt her, scared her, made her feel anger, hate, love, pride.
The young reaper watched as Maka slumped limply into soul's grasp, in the very next moment he swore he heard Soul murmur Maka's name.
Their resonance link hummed as Soul reached forward and opened himself up, pulling Maka back just as he became aware that she was numbing herself to everything. She re-set herself into perfect clarity and he felt the slight switch in her.
Soul opened his eyes.
His hand loosely gripped the eight foot metal staff, attached to which was a long curved blue, black and grey blade. A scythe.
Their resonance link was simpler now; she had chosen to only share her emotions with him. (She reasoned that she shouldn't tell him how to wield a scythe when she was new to being one.) He followed her lead and took a glance at the joint where the blade met the staff. Currently it rested on the ground, allowing most of her weight to be supported by things other than him, like the dirt.
He felt a bright bubble of something like laughter ripple across her and into him.
He picked up her intent instantly. She was waiting for him to lift her, amused that he thought she looked heavy. There was the undercurrent of her intense joy at being in weapon form, the rush of accomplishment echoed in her joy.
Death the Kid watched the pair intently, hardly breathing, fearful that he might somehow break whatever it was that held her in weapon form and stabilized their resonance link.
She was an odd looking scythe, blue toned in contrast to the red color that Soul took. The joint where the staff met the blade resembled half of a sharp gear jutting from the metal. Soul's weapon form had a rectangle of metal with three finger sized holes in it.
Soul looked over the scythe again. He let the feel of her laughter (now fading into a supportive sort of focused strength) echo in him as he gently lifted the scythe off the ground.
She was light. He felt her surprise in bright yellow, a reflection of his own surprise at her weight.
He turned to look at Death the Kid. The young reaper was standing with his hands in his pockets looking at the ground to his left.
"Kid?"
Soul's voice made the young reaper's eyes flash to his face, and then the weapon in his hands.
"Hm?"
Soul felt Maka's emotion try to temper him back into focus.
Soul swung her around, slowly then quickly before swinging the blade into a wide arc over his head and bringing the blade to a sudden stop mid-air. He moved to swing the blade again, bringing the blade down in a low swipe to the ground as he bent into a crouch. He let the staff swing from his left hand and pivot his right wrist until he caught the staff as it swung behind his shoulders.
The laughter (from Maka) flooding their link had toned into quiet awe.
Soul smirked and stood upright, planting the non-blade end of the staff solidly on the ground by his sneaker.
"Whoo!" Maka's voice flooded their resonance link, louder than she intended because he had dropped his guard in effort to focus on swinging the scythe around.
His smirk deepened as a bright sliver of light ushered in the transformation of Maka from weapon to human.
"Sorry."
Maka only looked half apologetic as she kicked at the grass with her boot.
They both turned to Death the Kid who was composed (if only just) and approaching the pair with a shadow of confusion on his face.
"What happened?"
The young reaper gestured to the now human Maka.
"Oh, that."
Soul repressed laughter with an eye roll and a slight nod in the direction of his partner.
"She giggled."
…
END.
Disclaimer: I don't own Soul Eater.
