A/N: Even though the thing on Soul's shirt is rotten chocolate, the story's rated T for poop jokes. People, you have been warned.

Replace with Picko-Picko Hammers

Maka hated the whistling noise of the plastic thingies banging on solid places. She despised places with too much racket – bars, discos, name it. But being on a street where the main attraction was being hit on the head with a hammer was not where she thought the night would end.

And God, she loathed it.

"Tsubaki, Tsubaki!" Her indigo-eyed friend looked at her with a silly smile plastered on her face. "I'm going home."

"What? No, don't do that." The blond had to make an impossible effort to hear her friend soft-spoken words.

"For real Tsubaki. You stay here and have fun with Black*Star, I'm going to the train station and catch the next ride home."

Tsubaki sent her the best worried look she could muster in a place like this. "But going alone, are you going to be alright?" Maka crossed her arms and she smiled sheepishly. "Take care then."

In a hurry for some fresh air, the blond nodded quickly before she could be spotted by her blue-haired monkey friend and left to find a clearer street. Apparently, in this side of town, people seemed to adopt a habit of once a year throwing a party where picko-picko hammers where used to bang people without mercy.

The purpose of the festivity was ridiculous. Wasting a perfect night to be at home, just to roam around a road filled with girls and boys that take pleasure when knocking everyone on the skull. All you had to do was dance to the beat of poorly-arranged techno music and wave your weapon in the air, not caring if it his everyone around you.

"Ouch! Oi, watch where you point that thing!"

"Sheesh, calm down." The punk who hit her head turned to his friend. "What a pussy."

"I heard that!"

"Soul, get in the car. Moping around on the street isn't going to do wonders – mother and father aren't changing their minds."

"I know." He messed with his hair. "I just need some time to think."

Wes looked at him from inside the car and sighed. "Pick you up in an hour?"

Soul grinned. "You got it."

The oldest son of the Evans nodded and closed the window of his black Mercedes. As the sound of the motor and the smell of burnt rubber invaded Soul's senses, the silence grew deeply. If only he had brought his bike – but of course, his parents would never let him.

Recitals on a Saturday night. Someone save me please...

It's boring, and not to mention unethical. Don't his parents have any sense of moral? He should be having fun right now, with his friends. At least he will have some time to be rebellious; he should be preparing himself but instead he's roaming a dark street.

Alone.

He just rounded a corner when he felt something hit him with force. His behind landed on solid ground and he let out the worst type of bad-mouth that he remembered. Angrily, he glared at the reason of his fall but softened when he found a girl, probably his age, on top of him.

She grinned at his face and winked, giving him the thumbs up. "Thanks for cushioning." She glanced behind her shoulder, then at his face and then she frowned. "Bye, bye now."

"Hey what the-" She leapt from the top of him and sprinted into an alley. He wanted to yell at her to wait up or slow her pace enough for him to ask what was going wrong for her to be running like a runaway.

The answer came soon enough, but not like he expected it.

"Come here you bitch!"

His head turned from her retreating back to the road ahead and what he saw made his blood freeze on his veins. His heart plummeted to the ground when a group of seven people armed with chains and coloured plastic hammers appeared in his line of vision with grim faces and murderous auras.

Could the night get any worst?

Not wanting to end up on the hospital with something missing from his face he got up swiftly and threw his body after the young lad with desperation. No way was she going to get him battered!

Left, right, left, up, down, left... When would the torture end? His legs started to feel weak from all the movement; he could feel the cramps appearing one by one. He knows he hasn't run for dear life in a while, but this was torture! Did old people feel like this every day?

He ran for hours inside the tortuous alleyway, and when it looked like the exit was close, he found himself face to face with a brick wall.

"Oh come on!" He was going to enter in a coma just by hearing the punk's screams getting near. His skin crawled and his courage began to disappear but he fisted his hands and prepared himself for a fight.

His palms were getting sweaty, his forehead was practically a waterfall and he was positive that somewhere below his arms a leak just broke. He was a complete mess – he had fought punks before, but these guys were outrunning him in number.

But if it was a fight they wanted, they were going to get it.

"Let's g-aaahhh!" An arm shot up and grabbed his ankle. He tripped and fell on top of something sticky with an horrible smell but shrugged it off when his body started sliding from the ground and behind an amount of boxes, totally hiding him.

He felt the moistness of a person's breath near his neck and shivered. The sounds of feet echoed in the walls and his heart skipped a beat when they stopped right in front of him. In that time, he was scared shitless – speaking of which.

He eyed his shirt in the dark like he could see the problem. "I damn hope this thing isn't what I think it is."

"Shhh!" His stomach hurt when an elbow struck him, but he remained quiet.

The same voice he heard scream earlier spoke; this time very near him. Soul scooted to the side to see if he could catch a glimpse. From a hole in the boxes, he saw a group of feet. "Where the bloody hell are the little shits?"

"Fuck it. Turn left, it's the only way out!"

There was a little more bickering while the guys decided on where to go and then they turned left into a dim road that Soul was sure it wasn't there before.

The shadow beside him sighed in relief and kicked the card boxes away, revealing the same girl that jumped on him before. She was covered in sweat like him, but her's glowed below the shine of the moon like glitter.

"Are you insane?" He asked in disbelief. She looked at him with curiosity. "What if they come back!"

"They won't." She assured him. Her eyes wandered to where the thugs were once standing. "The road ends in Stein's lab."

While the blond stretched her body and relaxed in the wall, Soul's eyebrows twitched in disgust. His scarlet orbs were well known with the horrors of the doctor's lair. He once ended up there by mistake; remembering that day made the hairs on his neck stand tall.

A mistake he won't be making anytime soon indeed.

His hand reached involuntarily to cup his neck. The faint sounds of water droplets hitting the ground awoke him from his disturbed thoughts and a horrible smell of… something, crawled up his nose.

"Oh great…"

He saw as the girl eyed him from the corners. She rubbed her mouth with the back of her hand and tried to add a serious face to their 'lack of conversation', but couldn't help it. "Pfffft…"

He frowned in disgust when looking at his red shirt "C'mon, laugh all you want. Giggle in the face of the guy who fell on top of dog poo!"

"S-sorry" She broke, banging on the ground lightly with her fist. "Y-You look like so-someone who-who was hit by a p-poop-ball!"

"Glad you're having fun lad." He tried to clean the brown stuff using a plastic bag he found on the ground, but it only got worse. "I look more like someone took a crap on me and left the job half-done after trying to clean it up using baby-towels."

The girl couldn't help it. She was laughing so hard that she practically rolled out to the ground and kept her cackling. It was quite fun to see someone laughing so much after being in a deadly situation. He may never know why, but she sure seemed glad to be finally able to sit down and stop worrying about who was on her tail.

He stood on his feet and started unbuttoning the red vest. The young Evans noted with a smug smile that she was watching his every move intently, blushing as he revealed more and more of his tanned skin. But her look moved away when he reached the bottom, much to his dismay.

"I can clean your clothes, if you want to. After all, it's somehow my fault."

He shook his head, but she didn't notice the action as her head was still averted from his body. "Nah. Why were the creeps following you anyway?"

"I hit one of them…"

"Oh."

"…with a picko-picko hammer from the gig on Corpse Avenue…"

"Hum?"

"…really hard."

Now it was his time to laugh. Even below the faint shine of a poor streetlamp he saw her cheeks grow red both from the revelation and current situation she was in. The warmth of his suit's jacket was welcomed after he closed the last few buttons and shoved his hands into his pockets.

The blond lifted her arms to the starry sky. "In my defence I didn't know the guy had his gang behind him! He looks like a wannabe punk with too much acne; the guy was practically begging at everyone to hit him on that greasy head!"

"Says the 10-year-old leaning next to a wall on a dark alley-" He closed his distance and whispered on her ear "-with an irresistible guy like me."

He swears he never saw that thing coming.

Forget all knowledge about gravity – better yet, remember everything about it and think of what would happen if a million elephants holding more ten pounds of flour on their noses were squashed by a stampede of raging rhinos and weighting a ton (each one of them) on top of him.

Yes it was that bad.

And he came to remember that it was called a 'Maka-Chop'.

Gave him nightmares for a week.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaarghh!"

She did nothing to help him up from his place. Instead, she planted her hands on her hips and turned her nose upwards, waiting for some sort of apology that he would never give, not after being through the end of the world and brought back to earth with a bang.

"What the hell is wrong with you lady?"

"I'm fifteen!" Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand she looked disappointed, like she expected more from him. "Men, all idiots."

"Where did that come from! I almost got pounded because a certain gal thought it would be funny to knock out a gang member at a picko-party!" He looked at the bright-yellow-orange object in her hands. "And you did it again!"

The girl pointed a finger at him accusingly while he got up and brushed some invisible dust from his pants. "Don't drag that incident into the chat. If you weren't so full of yourself and stopped hitting on the first girl that-"

"Hitting? Psh… Pa-lease – like I would ever hit on a nosy, arrogant, flat-chested, kid that has nothing more to do with her life then running away from death!"

There was a pause. "Oh really?"

It never crossed his mind that something he said would hurt him. He is known for his quick replies; smug retorts to his teachers were his favourite. Ok – so sometimes he doesn't know that keeping his yap shut is the best of plans, but she was being as stubborn as his mother on a cranky day.

But when the young girl in front of him crossed her arms protectively in from of her chest and looked down at her feet, he somehow knew he had gone too far. "Great." She said with a low voice to match her mood.

He tried to answer as quickly as possible. He was a gentleman dammit; even being the rebellious of the family and turning down orders like a snap was a big deal on daily basis, something always entered inside his brain. "W-Wait-"

Her retreating back was the reward he received for trying to mend things. He cussed.

Why couldn't this girl be normal and scowl him for his boldness? She's a pain in the arse, that's what she is. She jumped on him and made him lad on his butt (and it hurt! For real!), laughed at the fact that he had a dog's dump on his shirt and knocked him out for a few terrible seconds in which seemed that he was holding the whole world with his head.

And then she got pissed at him for no reason. He admits that sometimes he's too much to handle, but that's only to be expected! Does she need glasses? Hello? Bloody red eyes, bleach-like hair, piercing-as-a-chain-saw teeth? He practically expels badass and she knew it on first sight.

She was ogling him when his shirt was being peeled off his body. Back there, she showed him the daring girl inside but now she was moving back the way she came from. Insane, irritating, intense-

Though he must admit that even with all the secret ranting inside his head, that she will probably never know he thought-

He called her anyway.

"Oi!" She didn't turn, he was running out of ideas. So he kept calling her stupid names and nicknames that he was sure to piss her off at some point. Why didn't he ask for her name? Why? "Tiny-tits! Tiny-tits! Hey – pigtails! Huh… nerd-verm? Yeah! HEY HAMMER-GIRL!"

"WHAT!"

He could practically feel the heat of her growing rage when he shoved his shirt at her face. But with the clean side – he didn't want a repeat of the rhino stampede ten-times worse.

"You can clean that up if you insist. You can return it to me in two days at Death Robbins at three o'clock."

"Hello Maka, is everything okay?"

The sound of her preoccupied friend on the other line of her cell-phone only made her smile grow wider. She was such a good presence to have around; always soothing her nerves and making her feel welcome despite the situation. "Yeah Tsubaki, everything's fine. I'm at home now, safe and sound – and I even got a free ride home!"

At this, Tsubaki flipped. "A free ride home? Maka you took a lift from a stranger? Isn't that too reckless coming from you?"

"I'm fine." She assured. "The guy who took me was friendly enough."

"The last time you said that, I had to call Black*Star because you didn't stop with just one punch on the man that stalked you for two days."

"Well duh…" She deadpanned. "You said it yourself: it was two days. The guy deserved the pounding. And guess what? He never showed up again." She finished the sentence with a sneaky smile even though her friend couldn't see. She dropped her house keys and the red shirt on top of the small table beside the door and dropped dead on the small couch.

"So, how did you get the ride?"

Maka sighed. "It's a long story…" Blair came out from one corner of her humble home and curled next to her belly. Maka patted the cat's head affectionately.

"Oh! I want to hear everything about it! Tell me every bit."

Maka turned her head around so that she could get a glance at the red shirt, surely not hers, staring right at her. Of all colours in the whole wide world, the thing had to be red – like his eyes. So flashy.

Her mind wandered to the brief chat they had on the smelly alley. She remembered well when he threw that thing with a circle of brow stuff on its front, and her malevolent thoughts of the best way to castrate him. The anger she felt when he had the nerve of demanding her to clean his clothe in two days.

Then she remembered his flushed face and how his hand kept returning to a certain place on his head, ruffling his white-as-cotton bangs.

The information took a little to sink into her mind but she thinks she gets the message.

"Well Tsubaki," She said after straightening her back into a sitting position. "I think I have a date in two days."