THE BULLET WALTZ

Author's Notes: This fic takes place directly following The Good Son and is dedicated to my two favourite Troika authors, Gin-kyo and Nenena, who inspired me to love the complicated and beautiful relationship between Kid, Liz and Patty.

"There are three constants in life: change, choice and principles." ~Stephen Covey

PART ONE

Long Island, New York

The nights had started to turn cold over the past week, frost patterning the corners of taxi windows while their drivers caught ten minute naps between fares. It prompted the desperate scrounge for old newspapers and the least sodden cardboard boxes to feed into oil drums lit at night, while the homeless of New York clustered around them. The experienced ones knew that this would be the leanest month, an indefinite time between the first cold snap and the first snowfall when people would hurry down the streets, mindful of their own shivering but forgetting that the transients still needed their offhand donations. It wasn't necessarily always money and so, when a steaming cup of coffee crossed the man's vision, he looked with equal parts thanks and awe up at the beautiful face of the woman offering it.

"Here," she said serenely. "You look like you could use this."

"Thank you ma'am," the homeless man answered, touching a hat that didn't exist in an effort to be polite.

His fingertips started to tingle after he accepted the cup, the thin styrofoam sides barely containing the heat. Sipping the liquid inside, he was surprised at how quickly the warmth suffused him - and then alarmed, as it spread and spread until his whole body felt afire. His eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped forward, the coffee splashing across the grimy pavement.

The woman's expression changed as she leered at the immobile body. Slowly tugging free of its flesh, the man's soul drifted upward, connected only by a thin filament of light. The coffee had been laced with a heavy extract of dittany, an herb once used by the Greeks to aid in astral projection. With the right magical enhancements, it became capable of thinning the tether between body and soul, and the witch severed this one with a wolfish grin before moving on.

Death City, Nevada
Three Days Prior

"If our information on her identity is correct," Nygus began, passing around a folder with information pulled directly from Shibusen's confidential records of witch activity. She, Sid, and Spirit had urgently entered the Death Room, stopping the lesson between father and son. Since Shinigami hadn't asked him to leave, Kid was now standing unobtrusively nearby as the bandage-wrapped weapon continued, "Her name is Holjda. She's over two hundred years old and uses a herbology-based magic. NYPD contacted us earlier this morning. In the last two weeks, they've discovered over a dozen bodies, mostly homeless. Although the initial autopsies concluded that they died of natural causes, it's now known that their souls were removed anywhere from one to three days prior to their deaths."

Shinigami was having trouble separating the sheets of paper with his huge hands and commented absently, "A soul can continue without a living body. But without the soul, the body will give up. It wouldn't do to have- ah thank you, Kid," he interrupted himself as the teen stepped forward and took the papers to divide them neatly.

"What about sending in two or three high-level teams?" Spirit spoke up. "If they can corner her-"

"Then she might go to ground," Sid pointed out, as usual thinking the most strategically about the situation. Nygus was nodding in agreement as he continued, "We've don't even know if she's releasing her Soul Protect when this happens. It might not be a spell she's using, which will make her almost impossible to locate."

"Tch. Damn witches are getting more bold lately," the redhead grumbled, crossing him arms childishly at having his suggestion so easily shot down.

The Reaper brought one hand to the bottom of his mask thoughtfully for several moments before replying. "Please have three teams put on standby," he requested, and flashed them a thumbs up. "I'll let you know!"

Wordlessly, the three faculty members nodded and filed out. As easy as it might have been to describe the god's behaviour as simply juvenile, all of them knew that Shinigami didn't make the decision to send students - even those of a two-or-three-star level skill - into battle against a witch lightly.

After they had left, Kid closed up the folder, having digested all the information contained within on the witch. He came to stand next to his father as Shinigami called up Manhattan on his mirrors, as though seeing the city under siege would help him choose the right course of action. "Not good when witches can't be pinpointed as witches," the elder god mused. "That Soul Protect is becoming a pain, hmm~?"

"We'll find something to counter it," Kid answered. Only last year they'd discovered a witch trying to open a demonic gate inside a boarded up bakery not even ten blocks from the school. Shibusen's teams had caught her before any real harm could be done, but the fact remained that until she'd released her Soul Protect during the final spell, they'd been oblivious to her presence within Death City. Kid still recalled the angry words hurled at Shibusen's steps as some of the citizens let their fear run their mouths. Spirit - under the authority of Death Scythe - had dispelled them, but it served to remind Kid how fickle human loyalty could be.

Shinigami patted his son's head playfully, though underneath the gesture he appreciated the reassurance. "Until then, however..."

"Let me go to New York," Kid said earnestly. "I'll find the witch for you, Father."

The Reaper hesitated and the pause was long enough to make Kid wonder what the silence was supposed to convey. He read worry, resolve, regret in the omnipresent brush of his father's soul, but no explanation was offered until finally Shinigami replied, "Taking a witch's soul is no easy feat. Much different than a kishin egg. To do so by yourself..."

"But I have a better chance of finding her than the teams," Kid pointed out. "You're thinking of sending Anthony, Eileen and Damian's team, aren't you?" He looked expectantly up at his father and without waiting for an answer, continued, "Damian has the strongest soul sense between all three meisters, but his can be unreliable under pressure. Also Eileen and Alice are barely speaking to each other, so they're more likely to blow up a city block during a resonance than patrol it."

Shinigami stared at his son, who had somehow managed to acquire all the gossip of Shibusen's hallways without the benefit of actually attending. "Is that so~?" he said thoughtfully. "I'm glad you're paying attention, Kid! But we can't wait too long with so many people at risk. Do you think you can track her down in three days?"

Kid nodded swiftly, though Shinigami knew that he'd not even considered another option before replying. Kid's childish promise to never fail a mission he was given flitted through his mind, and he wondered if his son was thinking about that too. "All right, Kid. I'm counting on you."

Brooklyn, New York

Liz let her head loll against the dirty brick wall, the smell of paint fumes dulling her senses. The sound of the city's afternoon ambiance was mixed with her sister's tuneless humming and the hiss-whisk of the spray can. "Sis, look!" Patty grinned up at her from her seated position, her fingers stained with acrylic yellow. "I drew another giraffe! And a sunflower!"

"Good girl," Liz murmured. The pleasant lightheaded feeling was transitioning to nausea seated in her too-empty stomach. She pushed off the wall, wiping the grime on the torn leg of her jeans. Although her immediate concern was the food, her mind was also planning for tonight. She'd been much more cautious the last few weeks, ever since the bodies had started showing up. News of them had spread through the city's itinerant population like the latest hot clubbing drug: people who'd simply shown up dead for no good reason, and even the cops were baffled. It meant that in addition to keeping them fed, Liz had to be extra careful as to where they spent the night. "Come on. Let's see if we can get lunch."

"Gehehehe," the younger sister laughed, bouncing to her feet. That meant that they were going to find a mark and steal their money, then treat themselves to a hot meal. "Sis, can I have a cheeseburger?"

"Sure."

"And fries?"

Liz put an arm around her sister's shoulders and pulled her close as they swaggered down the alley. "Anything you want, Patty."

Lower Manhattan, New York

New York was much bigger than he'd expected, busier than any city Kid had ever visited before. The intense press of people, ebbing and flowing like the tide against an island, was starting to feel overwhelming. It was one thing to know intellectually the population of a given place, and another to be standing in the middle of it. Kid focused on the pleasing aesthetic of streets plotted in an orderly grid, which made it both easier to navigate and easier on his sanity. He was trying not to be derailed from his task at hand, but the city was proving to have more than its fair share of distractions.

And he was running out of time.

For three days Kid had been scouring the streets for his elusive target. So far he'd found only two more of the witch's victims, left as nothing more than soulless dolls. This Holjda's process of harvesting human souls without killing her victims in the process - a depraved mockery of a shinigami's konso ability which raised an unexpected ire in Kid - was unlike anything Shibusen had seen before. His father was anticipating his success and Kid couldn't bear to think that he might be letting him down.

He realized that he was scowling and that a shadow darker than the black pavement was twisting along the street behind him, reacting to his emotions.

"All right, Kid. I'm counting on you."

Taking a deep breath to calm himself, Kid turned purposefully off the lit streets and down an alley, treading neatly between the piles of garbage lining the space between the buildings. He wouldn't find a witch in the places where light reached, and so into the darkness he went.

Long Island, New York

Holjda knew she was being hunted, felt a voracious grin stretch her mouth too wide for it to have been mistaken for human any longer. She wasn't young and foolish enough to think that her actions would escape Shibusen's notice, and in truth was looking forward to it. She had nothing to fear from the child-warriors that the Grim Reaper would send after her. She wondered if he even remembered that she'd killed one of them a century ago. She could still taste the salty tang of the young girl's blood on her lips as the meister lay dying on the Parisian stones at her feet.

To hell with the rule of the gods, she thought viciously. The Reaper was effectively crippled, leashed to Death City and even eight hundred years later, the witch masses had still not overcome their haunted memories of Death and his elite Eight which had plagued them.

She refused to acknowledge that the brief touches of her pursuer hadn't felt like the bitter tang of human mortality; Holdja was done cowering. "Come and find me," she crooned up towards the smog-blurred stars. "I'll eat you up..."

Brooklyn, New York

The suit had fooled her.

When Liz grabbed the guy's shoulder, spun him around before slamming him back into the wall, she was surprised to see that he was younger than she was, perhaps her sister's age. Her knuckles scraped across the brick as she leaned her weight forward to keep him in place, lifting Patty's muzzle up under his chin. Even if he was young, there was no way someone so well-dressed didn't have a ton of cash on him. "Hand over your wallet," she leered, flecks of ash falling onto his shirt as her cigarette bobbed in her mouth. "Or we'll blow your head open."

At the dual pronoun, his eyes shifted to the gun she held. His eyes were unnerving; Liz had never seen eyes so yellow, or pupils ringed like that. But she refused to back down and jabbed the sharp point of the sight into the pale skin of his throat. "Hurry up, rich boy."

"No."

A low growl erupted from Patty as her image appeared in the polished steel. "Hey asshole, my sister said to give us your money! Or we're gonna mess you up real good!"

Kid's mouth pulled into a frown. A shame. This is one pair that Shibusen wasn't able to reach, he thought. Although the DWMA was recognized as a legitimate authority around the world, hence its branches on multiple continents, its enrollment was and always would remain voluntary. Without that precept, it could easily be interpreted as conscription of a powerful army and cause mass outrage. Yet that also meant that some weapons and technicians could not be taken in before their abilities led them to actions like this one. Kid looked at the pair - sisters, he corrected - and focused on their souls.

"H-Hey," Liz pulled back slightly when his gaze sharpened and she felt like he was looking right through her. Hoping to intimidate him, she jerked him forward and then pushed him hard against the building a second time. "Are you goddamned stupid-"

Their souls weren't tainted. Kid brushed the cool metal away from his face with an uncaring hand and ducked under the blond's arm. "Excuse me," he said. "I have other matters to attend."

And he started to walk away.

Liz was sure her jaw was reaching the ground.

A spike of soul energy flared behind him, and Kid felt the barrel of the Beretta against the back of his head. Annoyed, he turned to disarm his would-be mugger... then stopped, startled to see it was now a different girl standing before him - but the gun was the same! Yellow eyes widened as he realized he'd perceived them wrongly. It wasn't just one weapon and one meister, but both souls sharing both abilities. And while siblings who shared weapon blood weren't uncommon, for them to be identical weapons was unheard of. "You're-"

But there was no time to press them for information. A surge of magical radiation as the release of a witch's Soul Protect flooded the area, and Kid stepped back with a fiercely satisfied look in his eyes, oblivious to anything he'd been about to say.

"Got you," he said softly, predatory, and simply walked away.

They watched him go, mute with shock.

After he'd left, Liz felt Patty's arms drop to her side, her grip on the handle loosening. Perhaps it was the exhaust fumes that settled in the narrow spaces of the city clouding her mind, but she really had no idea what had just happened. Her form glowed as she sprang out of her gun form, putting her arms on Patty's shoulders and giving her sister a light shake. "Patty! Are you all right?"

"Sis, he just..."

Liz stroked Patty's cheek with her thumb, releasing a long sigh. "Yeah. That was..."

"He just walked away from us, like we were nothing."

There was a tense moment, where Liz searched the inflections of her sister's words for the undercurrent of maniacal laughter it sometimes held... but this time Patty just seemed confused. "We're not nothing," the elder said vehemently. "Don't say stuff like that. We rule this town, right? So let's just go, okay? Listen to your sister, Patty. That guy was just a punk. Don't worry yourself one bit about him."

Long Island, New York
Two Hours Later

Kid allowed himself a moment to lean against the alley wall and catch his breath. The battle with Holjda had been difficult, exactly as his father had warned. She'd used the man made jungle of Manhattan and the earth beneath it to her advantage, and he was sure he'd swallowed more concrete shards than even his shinigami body was compliant in handling. He reached up to touch the wound on the left side of his neck where her nails had scored him. The holes were small but refused to close, insult upon injury to the assortment of other bruises he now had. Poisoned, maybe... It would fit the witch's flora-based magic and while it wouldn't be enough to harm him significantly, she couldn't have known that it was causing him to seriously contemplate puncturing the other side of his neck so that they matched.

No. That would make more of a mess.

The violet glow of the witch's soul floating in front of him cast a sickly light upon the ground and Kid focused on that. Holding his hand out, shadows leapt from his palm and surrounded the orb, lapping at it like liquid until he was able to pull it inside him. Immediately he felt heavier, his shoulders sagging at the additional burden of keeping its malevolence contained. Holjda's soul would be turned over to his father for judgment but until he got back to Death City, it was in his care.

"Who are you?" the witch had snarled, spell poised to launch at him. "You're not one of Shibusen's spawn!"

"I answer to Death alone," he'd answered, the shadows of his birthright swimming around him. "And I lay claim to your damned soul."

Although he knew that he had to report back to Shibusen as soon as possible, the task of summoning the glyph that allowed him to bypass the usual need for a mirror to call his father seemed monumental. Stop being weak! Kid berated himself. He had yet to fail a mission he'd been sent on, but if he continued having trouble defeating even a single witch in battle...

Unease coiled like lead in the pit of his stomach. If he couldn't be trusted to carry out his father's orders, he'd be useless. That thought alone was enough for him to straighten and gather his wits, checking himself to not appear too fatigued. Taking a deep breath, the shadows from the alley pulling closer to him, he flicked his hands out and cast the giant skull sigil across the ground.

Immediately Shinigami's visage popped into existence, so quickly that Kid knew he'd been waiting at the mirror for this call. "Whassup whassup! How goes your trip?"

Only his father would refer to a tactical mission to dispatch a witch in the same way most would refer to a vacation, Kid thought. "Complete, Father. I have the witch's soul in my possession."

"WHEW~!" the god mimed relief. "That's good news all right! Great job! So you're coming home now?"

Kid recognized the underlying concern in his parent's tone, and could only imagine the sight he must have presented at the moment. "Shortly," he answered. A thought flitted across his mind, nudging its way between his current asymmetric appearance and gnawing doubt. "I would like to check on one other thing before I return. May I have your permission, Father?"

"Ohhh?" Shinigami was bemused but curious as to what could have caught his son's attention to make him want to remain in a stressful city with the added burden of a witch soul in his keeping. Trusting it was for the best, he replied, "Of course you can, Kid. Just be careful you don't tire yourself out too much!"

The teen flushed, realizing that his weariness was not as well hidden as he'd thought; he should've known better than to try and obscure such things from the person who knew him best. "Yes, Father. I'll see you soon."

Brooklyn, New York

Kid backtracked through the dark streets until he came to the alley where he'd been accosted by the two young women, but the would-be muggers were nowhere to be seen. Frowning, he cast out his senses, trying to see if they were still in the area. His tracking led him towards the river and into the labyrinth of industrial warehouses. Yet in the end it wasn't their souls which allowed him to locate the sisters, but the contingent of flashing lights and police cruisers he came across.

"You're surrounded!" came the echoing crackle of a megaphone. "Return to your human forms, separate to ten yards apart, and come out with your hands behind your heads!"

In response, the rapid bang of gunshots pinged off metal. A standoff, Kid surmised, peering inside the warehouse to gauge the situation. Maybe two dozen uniformed officers were ringed in a semicircle created by crates and machinery, guns drawn and ready. Even as he watched, a blond head popped above a stack of boxes on the far wall and fired off several more shots, the magenta streaks of light marking their trajectory leaving no doubt that they were demon guns.

Kid considered his options. This pair was obviously on the wrong side of the law; they'd tried to rob him and while their souls weren't tainted now, it might not take them long to start down that path. But the concept of identical, symmetrical weapons would not leave his mind.

So he walked inside the warehouse.

One of the officers noted his approach and swung the barrel of a shotgun around in his direction. "You!" he shouted, drawing the attention of the others. "Stay where you are and identify yourself!"

Kid kept his hands at his sides, but didn't flinch as half of the guns swiveled around to train on him. "Stand down," he said. "I'm placing these two under Shibusen's jurisdiction effective immediately. I ask that they be released into my custody at once."

One officer - a captain, Kid identified by the uniform markings - stepped forward with a hard look at the teenager. "We have warrants for their arrest. Don't interfere!"

"DWMA's accords allow demon weapons to be charged under its laws," Kid answered the challenge evenly; at least he was speaking to someone who potentially had the ability to call off the others. "And I speak with the full authority of Lord Death himself. I'll ask again, please lower your weapons."

Liz felt splinters dig into her back as she leaned against the crate for cover. There were shouts and grunts and the occasional ricochet that didn't sound like it was aimed in their direction. What was going on? They'd been cornered and now the cops were being challenged by that scrawny kid they'd accosted earlier. The words hadn't been distinct enough for her to hear what they were saying, and after several moments of battle noise it suddenly went quiet. She raised her sister's form about the edge of the crate. "Patty," she hissed. "Can you see what's happening?"

"Sis," Patty's voice was low and awed. "Look..."

Liz risked a glance, but it turned into a long stare before she slowly got to her feet. "What... the hell..."

The officer's bodies were piled, some groaning, some too stunned to make any noise at all. The black-suited teen was standing atop the pile, brushing away the scant amount of dust that had dared settle on his otherwise impeccable suit, as though the entire battle had been nothing more than a minor inconvenience for him. Almost in a daze, Liz stopped a few feet from the neat - neat! - pyramid of blue uniforms before she found her voice. "Who the fuck are you?" she snarled.

His face puckered as though hearing the curse was a physical distaste for him, but he answered, "My name is Death the Kid. I'd like to ask you both to come with me."

"We're not going anywhere with you," Liz said vehemently. Up close, she could see that he wasn't as flawless as she'd first thought. There were scuffs and scrapes and what might've been a stain of blood on the side of his collar. Something had obviously happened between their first meeting and this one. Yet with the way he carried himself, it projected a certain touchless quality. Her lip curled instinctively; she really needed a cigarette, but she also wanted to get away from this freak as soon as possible. "Come on, Patty. Let's go."

"Wait!" The first peak of emotion entered his voice; not even when they'd had a gun shoved in his face had he reacted that strongly. "Please listen to me! I want you both to be my weapons. You two are perfect- no, exquisite!" Liz was just starting to feel flattered (though no less weirded out) when his expression turned blissful and he continued, "You're perfectly symmetrical!"

Instantly, the elder sister's face darkened like a storm cloud. "Patty! Now!" she barked. Her sister scampered to her side, uncharacteristically quiet as the two of them turned towards the warehouse doors.

Kid scrambled down the pile of unconscious officers and hurried after them. "No, that's a compliment..." he began, reaching for Patty's arm to pull her to a stop. Liz saw it in her peripheral vision and without a second thought, turned and slugged him in the side of the head, hard enough to leave him staggering.

"Don't touch my sister, you son of a bitch! Just leave us alone!"

He backed off, expression wounded and his hands held up to signify his compliance, but Liz was anything but placated. She was intimidated, because it had been a long time since someone had shown an absolute lack of fear in the presence of the Thompson Sisters. Even the police hadn't dared show up to arrest them tonight without outnumbering them a dozen to one. He tried to speak but Liz cut him off again, maneuvering to keep herself between he and her sister. "I don't believe anything you're saying. For one, who would name someone 'Death the Kid'? Could you have picked a more obviously fake name? Who do you think you're fool-"

"I'm named after my father, who is the Grim Reaper."

Liz stopped mid-jeer. "Seriously?"

"Yes?" he said, taken aback at her sudden change in tone. Then, apparently believing his response had somehow been impolite, he amended, "Yes, I'm being serious. About my name and about the rest of what I said. I really would like you both to come with me to Death City and become my weapons."

"Is there ice cream?" Patty asked suddenly. "We can go if there's ice cream!"

They both stared at her, he confused and Liz mollified at the reminder that this guy should have been their target and how badly that had failed, and that her sister was still hungry. "Patty, it's not-"

"PATTY WANTS ICE CREAM!"

"Yes, Death City has ice cream," Kid recovered smoothly, while Liz shot him a glare. "If that's what you'd like in exchange, I can certainly accommodate your request."

And Patty was again all sunshine and smiles, tugging on her sister's arm excitedly. "Sis, let's go! It'll be fun!"

Ice cream? Liz thought, feeling dazed. She wanted to open her mouth and protest, to say just how insane this all was, but Patty was happy and the kid (Kid?) was offering them his hand (silver skull rings and all) like it was the most natural thing in the world. So that's what it comes down to.

But then, sometimes it really was the simple things in life that made the difference.

To be continued...