Hey! Thanks for opening my dumb fic! I hope you enjoy! Heads up, it starts off a little science-y. I study it at Uni, but I tried to simplify it as best as I could. Ultimately, some of it's foreshadowing, some of it's headcanon, and none of it's absolutely necessary – if it's not your thing, just skim it. Also, I have no intention of putting any romantic relationships in this (just a prewarning). OK, I think that's it; on with the show!
Stein slammed the pile of papers on the desk. "Abysmal," he said, softly. His eyes circled the classroom like a predator; not even Black*Star felt able to make even the slightest sound.
"This is entry level stuff. You should have learnt half of this in your first year – students in their first week could have beat the class average hands down! If it wasn't for students like Maka and Ox, I'd be seriously worried about my ability as a teacher. Tsubaki, Jacqueline, you did alright, too. As for the rest of you – did you think you could slack off just because we made it through that one hardship? Did you think you could just stop learning, that we wouldn't need to worry about anything anymore, that we could make it through the rest of our lives riding on that one achievement? Don't be so naïve!"
He tapped twice on his bolt. "Since you are acting like children, I guess I'll treat you like children. So! From the beginning!" He propelled his chair towards the board with a kick to his desk; the shockwave knocked the test papers onto the floor. They were a stark pattern of red and white (and one mermaid) against the stone slabs. Stein hit the board with his fist to grab everyone's attention, and drew a horizontal squiggly line on it. "What is this?"
"A wavelength," grunted Soul.
"Wrong!" sang Stein. "This is a wave. This," he drew a line between two peaks of the wave and marked it 'X', "is the wavelength. In this case, the soul wavelength. Nothing in this world is static – even the very atoms and molecules that make our bodies are moving in a way that we don't notice; nonetheless, they are moving. Souls are like that – every soul vibrates, pulses at a unique frequency. Being able to control the frequency of your soul is vital in your abilities as weapons and meisters. Watch."
He reached back up to the board, and drew another wave directly under the first. It was as if someone had taken the original and stretched. He marked the wavelength of this one '2X'. "A greater wavelength always leads to a lower frequency – in the space it takes for the first one to have two repeats, the second one has only just finished its first repeat. If you know the frequency, you know the wavelength, and vice versa – our use of 'soul wavelength' is merely a convention. Now, let's say these wavelengths represent that of a weapon-meister pair, and they adjust them until they match." Next to each wave, he drew another pair of identical waves, and labelled their wavelengths '1.5X'. "What do we have here? No, not you Maka. Tsubaki?"
"Soul resonance?" she said, quietly.
"Are you asking me, or telling me?"
Tsubaki looked over at Maka, who, grinning, gave her a thumbs up. "Soul resonance," she said, more firmly.
"Good girl. Not only do these souls have the same wavelength, but they peak and trough in exactly the same places. When this happens, it amplifies them. For example, if both of these have heights of 'Y', the resulting wavelength would be '2Y'. If one of the wavelengths is 'Y', and the other is '2Y', it would make a wavelength of height '3Y'. You add them, not multiply them, Liz." The girl in question blushed and shrank back in her seat.
"She wasn't the only one. If I could be bothered to list all the names, about half of you would be sitting there like tomatoes. At least. So be thankful that I'm so lazy." He turned back to the board. "Now let's say the second person screwed up. The wavelength is right, but instead of peaks meeting peaks, it's peaks meeting troughs. In this case, they would cancel each other out completely, and both parties would be rendered powerless. This is why resonating can be difficult to master at first – you need to sense your partner's wavelength precisely – carelessness from one of you can and will backfire on both of you."
He picked up a new piece of chalk – a fierce red, as opposed to white – and drew an angry looking scribble. "The wavelength of insanity. With so many peaks and troughs, at so high a frequency, it will both amplify and cancel just about everyone's soul wavelength. It's – it's hard to describe what exactly this feels like. Half of an answer that feels like the whole. All-consuming. Intense. Some people here have experienced this themselves – maybe after the lesson, they'll feel comfortable enough to tell you what it was like for them, but don't push it.
"Anyway, some people are more predisposed to madness because their soul wavelength is naturally shorter. More places for the insanity wavelength to affect, see? And some people are able to produce a second wavelength on top of their natural wavelength – one with the ability to match the inverse of the insanity wavelength, and cancel it out. These people are rare, but we have one right here." He formed his fingers into a gun, and pointed them at Maka. "Miss Alburn, there."
Maka raised her hand. "So – does that mean my anti-demon wavelength could cause madness?"
"Ha!" laughed Stein. "Clever girl! In theory it could – but the madness you produce would most likely consume you before it can reach anyone else, which would break your concentration enough to force you to stop using it. Your own soul wavelength is the first one it would reach, after all. Don't worry, you're safe!
"Anyway, most soul wavelengths are not as even as the ones on the board. They form their own unique patterns – so, we could have a repeat of X, X, 0.5X, 2X, or something. It's this that allows everyone to have unique soul wavelengths that can be sensed and identified by people with that ability. There are certain identifiers in a soul's wavelength, however, that can allow people to tell if it's from a witch or an animal or a human or something else entirely. Luckily, you don't need to know about those, so I don't have to bother teaching that!"
He looked at his watch. "Ehhh, close enough. Find your papers, work out where you went wrong, revise that area, blah, blah, blah. Stein out!" He kicked off from the floor and went hurtling towards the door – and landed headfirst on the floor when his chair inevitably caught on the threshold strip. Unfazed, he used the momentum from his fall to work his way up to standing, and stalked off, the tails of his lab coat swirling dramatically.
"We still have over half the lesson left," Tsubaki whispered to Black*Star. "Shall we work on our papers?"
"Hell no!" Black*Star cheered, somersaulting towards the door. "Soul! Let's go play!"
"OK! Oh – Maka, could you – "
"I'll grab your paper for you. Go have fun."
"Thanks, Maka! You're the greatest!" he called, already out the door.
Tsubaki appeared at Maka's side. "Shall we work together?"
"Of course!" smiled Maka. "Let's wait for the crowd around the papers to thin out a bit, I don't fancy getting caught in that."
Tsubaki laughed. "No, nor do I!"
Liz, Patty and Kid joined them. "Hey!" said Liz. "We'll work with you, if that's OK? I doubt Maka and Kid will have much to do, but we could do with their help."
"Oh, of course you can join in!" Tsubaki said. "It'll be more fun with all of us."
"Awesome!" said Patty. "It's shocking how much we forgot, isn't it! I ended up being so depressed at how empty my exam paper looked that I just had to draw a picture over all the blank bits!"
"Patty, the mermaid took up nearly the entire paper," deadpanned Kid.
"I know!" she said.
"I think I can squeeze in there now," said Maka, peering through the crowd of their classmates. "I'll go grab everyone's, OK?" At their nods, she walked towards the papers, expertly navigating the crowd and returning in next to no time. "Tsubaki and Black*Star, Liz and Patty, Soul and me, and Kid, is this yours? I didn't see a name, but it looks like your handwriting…"
"Yes, that's mine. Writing my name can get too stressful, so I don't bother anymore. Instead, I use my time ensuring my answers are perfect, reaching exactly the same point on the page – and if I can't, then I have no choice but to erase it and any others I need to make my paper as symmetrical as possible." He calmly plucked the paper from Maka's hand, took one look at it, and collapsed on the floor in despair. Liz leaned over to look at his paper.
"Oh, dear," she said.
"Don't sully your eyes with my unworthy form…" Kid moaned.
"What is it?" asked Maka. Liz merely showed her his paper in answer. "I don't see anything wrong with it."
Patty inhaled. "Well, all of Stein's crosses are uneven, he circled – "
"Ovalled at best," interrupted Kid
" – ovalled-at-bested a word here but not anything on the other side, doodled a thing in the corner – "
"Looks like a cross section of a kidney, or maybe a lymph node," mused Maka. "Sorry, continue."
" – yeah, a thing in the corner, and worst of all he unexpectedly marked one of the questions wrong!"
Maka took the paper back and examined it closely. "Oh, I see. Well, the answer is oversimplified – at our level, you really need more detail than this – "
"But Maka!" wailed Kid. "If I had answered properly, then my paper would have been asymmetrical! If I can't make a simple exam paper beautiful, how can I possibly be expected to change the world into one of order? I'm a useless failure, doomed to forever suffer in this chaotic world, I should just – "
"Come to the library with us and figure out how you should have written each of the answers so you're prepared for next time? We're probably the two smartest people in the class – if anyone can work this out, it'll be us!" She held out one hand to Kid, who looked up at her with wide eyes from his position on the floor and took her hand with both of his. She pulled him to his feet with a laugh.
"You'd do that for me?" he asked.
"Of course! We're friends, aren't we?"
Kid grinned sheepishly, and took back his paper.
"OK! Group study session is a-go!"
Elsewhere, and at the same time everywhere, something awakens. It blinks with the eyes it does not yet have, and bares the teeth it can only imagine. Maka Alburn, walking arm in arm with Tsubaki Nakatsukasa through the halls of Shibusen, feels a chill run down her spine, but brushes it off.
Death the Kid feels nothing, yet.
Black*Star and Soul were fighting. Friendlily, of course, but to the casual observer, it looked like something far more vicious.
"You're not going to hit a god at that speed!" crowed Black*Star, jumping backwards to avoid Soul's swipe.
"Oh, yeah?" growled Soul, moving to Black*Star's side and kneeing him in the small of the back in one movement. Black*Star stumbled forwards, but recovered quickly, catching Soul with his elbow.
"Yeah!" Black*Star replied.
It didn't take long for the pair to tire themselves out, fighting all out on each other.
"Not bad," panted Soul.
"Not bad, yourself. Y'know, for someone who isn't me."
Soul laughed, breathlessly. "You can tell when Lord Shinigami has been nagging Stein to teach an actual lesson instead of his dissections, 'cos he can never make it through half the lesson."
"Clearly he can't stand being in the presence of my greatness for much longer than that," Black*Star said, matter-of-factly, and collapsed backwards, staring at the clouds.
Soul joined him. "Something like that, probably."
They lay there is silence for a while, the sun smiling down on them. "D'you reckon our next battle will be on the sun?" asked Black*Star.
"Hope not," Soul said. "Maka burns like you've never seen. She'll be irritable for months."
Black*Star snorted.
"What do you think Lord Shinigami wants with us later? I mean, with both our teams, it'll have to be something big," Soul said. "But not big enough for Kid or Ox or anyone else to come with."
Black*Star hummed. "Zombie outbreak," he said, decisively.
Souls laughed. "Come on! No such thing as zombies, outside of Sid! Anyway, they've been done to death by now. So uncool."
"You'll see. Zombie. Outbreak."
"Hey gang! 'Sup?" said Lord Shinigami, laughing. He didn't pause long enough for them to answer. "Good! Now, I have an itsy-bitsy mission for you, OK? Hopefully, it shouldn't be too hard but the connection was cut before I got all the details, so I'm sending both of you just to be extra safe! Actually, I know nothing but the location – you're heading to King's Nympton! In England! Maka, your father should be sorting out the travel details, so go visit him when you're all ready. I believe that's all. Anything I'm missing?"
Maka frowned. "I don't think so, Lord Shinigami."
"Excellent! Now, go pack, quickly, quickly! We want you to leave as quickly as possible, 'K?"
They left, Maka and Tsubaki deep in conversation about the coming mission. "England? I guess that means prepare for cold, wet weather," said Tsubaki. "Oh, dear, I'll never be able to get Black*Star to wear a sensible coat. He's so dreadful when he's sick, too."
"It shouldn't be that bad this time of year – I don't think we'll have anything to worry about. I've never heard of King's Nympton before, though. Must be a small town, or something."
"Well, we'll just have to see when we get there. Come on, let's catch up with the boys, and go pack."
"Right," nodded Maka. "We're in a hurry – meet back in an hour, and then go find my father?"
Tsubaki smiled. "Sounds like a plan!"
"Maka, my darling, my light, my daughter! Come to your daddy, let him hold you to his breast!"
Maka looked at him, nose wrinkled in disgust. "No."
Spirit kicked the floor, sadly. "Here are your plane tickets, and here's the booking information for the train you'll need to take. They're a bit, well, fussy down there, so we can't fly you in directly – you'll have to use public transport. It's a tiny little village – population of around 400. Lots of farmland. I managed to get a rental cottage for you to stay in – three rooms, so the boys will have to share downstairs, and the girls get a room each upstairs. I've sent a message to the people who sent the mission, so hopefully someone will be there to meet you at the station to lead you to the cottages, but if they don't make it, I've included a map. You'll want to head straight to the airport – you should be able to safely make the next plane – your destination is Exeter. Pick up your train tickets at one of the stations, and you'll be able to make it pretty close to the village. Don't worry about remembering all of this, I've included all of the information there for you. Hopefully this won't be a long mission, but you know all that we do."
Tsubaki took the thick envelope from his hands. "Thank you," she said. "We'll do our best."
Spirit nodded sharply. "I know you will. Maka – wait up, a sec. The rest of you, wait outside, or take one last toilet trip or something."
Maka looked warily at her father. "Is something wrong?"
He looked at her, a peculiarly strained expression on his face. "Maka, I know our relationship – well, it hasn't been the greatest. But, well, that is to say, um – "
"Papa!" Maka cut in, not unkindly.
"OK! This mission, it would have normally gone to one of the adults, because so little about it is known. Anything could happen – it could be dangerous, or boring, or anything in between. Which means more things for your father to worry about – and believe me, I will be worrying. But, after everything you've done, after how much you've grown, it would be patronising not to treat you like one of us. And, I just needed to make sure you knew that I am so, so proud of you – not because I'm your father, but as your father, if you understand."
She mulled the words over in her head. "Not really. But," she met his eyes, gently, "thanks, Papa."
Spirit grinned widely. "So, does that mean, when you get back, we can go on a father-daughter –"
"Don't push it, Papa."
King's Nympton is a real place. I live not too far from it part of the year.
One more chapter of set-up, and I think we'll be ready to start this thing proper.
Thanks for reading!