Words, Chapter 1
The pen twirled through the fingers of Soul's right hand effortlessly. Each cycle produced a faint staccato of plastic clicks as the ink cartridge bounced against the outer tube. His left hand served to prop up his head as he sat slouched in the upper reaches of the auditorium.
Below, professor Stein traversed the classroom floor, demonstrating something or other about resonance over distance with two jittery first-years.
Soul yawned, eyelids drifting closed.
Why had he agreed to do this stupid TA thing again? Sitting through "Fundamentals of Weapon-Meister Dynamics" had been painful enough the first time...all of the other Seniors were definitely using their free time in much cooler ways...
His carefully executed equilibrium of slackerhood fell to pieces as a heavy object collided with the back of his skull.
The pen skittered across the floor and down several rows, and Soul's chin collided with the desk. He howled in pain and sat up straight, growling at the girl sitting in the seat next to him. She ignored his glare, apparently enraptured by the contents of a large, fat textbook open before her.
"JEEZ MAKAAAA!" He fumed through clenched teeth. "You're so FREAKING IMMATURE!"
"Are you volunteering, Soul?" Professor Stein asked
Soul tore his venomous glare away from his parter. The entire classroom was now focused on him.
"Such a good idea!" Stein grinned. "You'll be perfect for the next demonstration."
Even from the far reaches of the classroom, Soul could see the faint twitching at the corner of Stein's mouth. The man always seemed to be at the brink of insanity. It made his skin crawl.
"You too, Maka." Stein added. "We'll need both Weapon and Meister."
Soul sighed, extracting himself from his chair. He slunk toward the front of the room, Maka following behind him.
"Soul, you IDIOT!" Maka seethed under her breath. "We're supposed to be setting an EXAMPLE!"
"It's YOUR fault, NUMBNUTS!" He hissed back.
"I don't HAVE any N-"
"Here we are!" Stein greeted the pair, placing his arms on their shoulders and turning them to face the class.
"Students, I give you Shibusen's finest."
Soul tasted a wry sarcasm in the Meister's words, but Maka seemed oblivious, brightening.
"Idiot..." Soul thought. Her innocence was maddening sometimes
Maka scanned the room, her heart swelling despite her anger at her partner. Twenty or so bright-eyed faces looked back - Like vessels, waiting to be filled with knowledge... she thought, nostalgically. A couple of the girls might have been staring a bit too lovingly at Soul, but, she thought, that was nothing new. She rolled her internal eyes...If they only knew...
Soul tried not to meet any of the first-year's eyes directly. He wasn't huge on people he didn't know, and these kids were awkward, gawky... fresh from the fetid, hormone-laden hell of middleschool... He felt a bit sorry for them, but that didn't mean he wanted to interact with them in any sort of significant way. It was Maka who had some sentimental idea that it was their duty to shepherd the clueless puppies... Crap. He'd only agreed to this because she said all they'd need to do was sit in the back and help grade papers once in a while...
"Soul. I am going to give you a piece of paper." Stein began, scribbling on a notepad as he spoke.
"You'll find some instructions written there - a physical location, and a word. After I hand you the paper, I want you to go straight to the location, sit there, and think about the word. While you're there, Maka will initiate Soul Resonance with you. She'll narrate the process to the class as it goes along." He turned to the class.
"After they've resonated, Maka should be able to determine Soul's location, as well as his focused thoughts - i.e., the word he'll be meditating on. This will be a demonstration of advanced resonance over distance. It requires a deeper wavelength connection, which is usually only reached after significant time working together as Meister and Weapon. These two started out just like you. I want you to see and understand what you're capable of."
"Maka, take a seat." Stein said, dragging his signature rolling office chair to the center of the classroom. As she sat, Stein said in a low voice
"Try not to employ too much of your Soul Perception, Maka. None of these kids are on the EAT track. I don't want to give them false expectations..."
He stood up, turning to Soul.
"Soul. Go here." Stein handed him the paper. Soul started to move toward the exit.
"Wait. Here's the word." Stein ripped another piece from his notepad, folded it in half, then in half again and stuck it in the front pocket of Soul's Spartoi jacket.
"Don't look at it until you get to the spot."
Soul wasn't sure, but he thought he detected a sadistic flicker in the corner of Stein's eye. He decided not to dwell on it.
"Fine." Soul said.
In a moment he was out the door.
Soul unfolded the first paper. In strange printing that looked like a centipede on acid had tripped through a puddle of ink, it said "4th left hand turret, balcony".
Great. Soul thought, groaning. Probably the farthest possible place away from the classroom. And it was going to require a lot of stair-climbing.
On his way to the turret staircase, soul passed the Senior lounge. BlackStar and Tsubaki were there, along with other upperclassmen. Tsubaki was perched delicately in a soft armchair, reading a book. Blackstar reclined on a couch, playing some sort of shooting game on his phone.
"Hi Soul!" Tsubaki chirped, smiling graciously.
"Hey". Soul replied, pausing for a moment.
"How's Kindergarten going, buddy?" BlackStar asked, stretching and yawning luxuriously.
Soul turned and kept walking, flipping the ninja off behind his back, deftly hiding the gesture from Tsubaki.
I'm going to kill Maka...
Soul clutched at the cramp in his side as he ascended the last 10 steps of the 60 flights of stairs leading to the turret balcony. It definitely didn't look that tall from the outside... freaking Shinigami voodoo... Soul growled
On the balcony, Soul collapsed against the outer wall of the turret, tearing off his jacket and loosening his tie. A steady current of warm wind flowed around him as the heat of the desert sun forced air thermals to rise upward from the ground. He squinted toward the sky, trying to calm his breathing. Several vultures wheeled in slow circles above Shibusen.
As his pulse slowed, Soul continued to watch the sky. The movement of the birds was rhythmic, dance-like. Something like a song, a waltz, began to materialize in his mind, keeping tempo with the slow turning of the big dark birds.
"Tell us what's happening now, Maka." Professor Stein probed.
"It's like... well... kind of like a hum... a buzz... that's what I feel like when I first reach out to resonate. It's different when Soul is next to me. It's easier...more instant if you decide to do it together, and you can see each other. It's less complicated when the purpose is for him to transform into a Scythe. Actually, there have only been a few times when we've had to resonate like this. For communication."
"Are you picking up anything yet?"
"Well... after all these years, Soul and I always have some small part that is constantly in resonance, whether we're paying attention to it or not. What I'm doing is trying to focus on that part, and bring it to the surface of my mind."
Maka closed her eyes and felt for the small cord that stretched between her and her Weapon. It was a fully different sense she was using - not seeing, not hearing, not feeling - but like all of them together and none of them at all. She was honing in, pinpointing the wavelength. As she drew it closer, its presence quickly built, becoming almost too much.
"You have to learn how to control it." Maka said, eyes shut, straining to focus.
"You're dealing with another person's being really, and you can't forget to maintain your being, your boundaries."
She pushed it back - holding it separate from herself, then began to follow it at a measured pace.
She didn't know the specifics of how other Meisters and Weapons experienced resonance - it would have been great if she'd had the opportunity to hear two Seniors describe the process in real-time when she was a first year - but with Soul's soul, at the beginning of resonance it was like following a rope along, hand over hand, the person on the other end sometimes pulling really hard, sometimes letting it go slack. Until she and Soul got the balance right, sometimes she'd be digging her heels in, sometimes racing forward to pick up the slack.
But once they found their groove, the were good. Scary good. Everyone said so.
As she followed the resonance cord, what Maka could only describe as a sound... a "note", to the first years, began to grow. The further she followed, the more defined it became. It started to pulse, developing a definite rhythm. The sound spread into chords. She felt like she was dancing, twirling.
"I see sky and... Soul, from above, he's on the balcony, and..."
Soul shook his head. Crazy. What was it about those birds... He'd been so entranced by the vultures that he'd almost forgotten about the word. He could feel Maka's wavelength now, linked to him in the unmistakable feeling of resonance. Her melody echoed off the walls of his mind. He could tell she was happy - enjoying the process of educating. She'd be a great teacher someday, he thought... a hard-ass, though. He sure as hell wouldn't want to take a class from her. Waaay too much reading required...
He pulled his coat onto his lap and dug the folded bit of note paper out of the front pocket. There it was again, the spidery handwriting. He could hardly make it out. He squinted, turning it sideways, then upside down, then right side up again. F... Fa... Oh, that was it - Family
Family.
A tsunami of uncomfortable emotions spread out from the epicenter of that loaded word, beaming along the resonance link between Soul and his Meister like electric shocks. Soul tried to clamp down the iron curtain of his mind before it was too late, but... it was too late. The harmonic waltz had turned into a dissonant cacophony. Soul clamped his hands over his ears in a futile attempt to block it out. Faintly, in the background of the awful din, he thought he caught the laughter of the Little Demon...
Stein, you bastard. You and your God-awful experiments...Why couldn't it have been "tree", or "dog", or ...
Maka gasped. Emotion flooded her, and her soul vibrated painfully. Potent feelings, joy and pain, hybrid memories - people she'd never seen before, and people she knew intimately flashed through her. It made a terrible sound - pressing against the corners of her mind so forcefully she thought her head might explode. Suddenly, her resonance with Soul was cut off, snapping back like a broken piano wire.
The force rocked her backward in the chair. She kept her eyes shut, regaining composure. After a few minutes, she opened her eyes.
"Well?" asked Stein.
"Family." said Maka.
"Very good." Said Stein.
The class erupted in applause.
On cue, the bell rang, and students shuffled to gather their belongings and hurry to the cafeteria for lunch period.
Maka stood and made a quick bow to Professor Stein. She felt like a leaking balloon, minutes away from complete diffusion.
"Thank you for allowing Soul and I to help today." She managed.
"Don't mention it." Said Stein. "How are you feeling, by the way?" He asked, scanning her face as he pulled a drafting pen out of his lab coat pocket. Maka looked away.
"Fine. I'm just... It's a lot of pressure, you know."
"Oh, I know." Said Stein. "Maka, are you sure you won't come by my office so I can check your vitals? You look a little bit flushed."
The overhead lights glared off of his glasses as Stein towered over her.
"Oh no, thank you, but I'm fine." Maka said, hurrying toward the door. She ducked her head one more time before leaving the classroom.
Stein nodded, producing a cigarette from an internal coat pocket. He lit it, took a drag, and plopped down in his chair, folding his arms behind his head.
"Interesting..." He drawled, blowing smoke rings toward the ceiling.