Author's note: Something I forgot to mention last chapter. This will be a pseudo-cross between the manga, the anime, and Soul Eater N.O.T.!. Spartoi exists, and Mifune will be a teacher at the DWMA/Shibusen(as his death in the manga was uncertain), Maka will (SPOILER ALERT) be part weapon, and Blair will be the more sisterly figure she is in the manga. Plus, Clay, Akane, Meme, Anya, and Tsugumi are all present in Spartoi.

Just thought that was something y'all should be aware of.

EDIT: No. Not anymore. I changed it. Mifune is dead and has been, because I don't want to confuse the two series. However, Maka is still part weapon, as it is an essential part of this story.

TWO HUNDRED YEARS EARLIER

-Maka-

Dinner was eaten in silence. Everyone was deep in thought. Even Blair, surprisingly.

We'd gotten two sets of news today.

One: Marie was pregnant.

Two: Angela had found out that Mifune was dead by Blackstar's hand.

It had just been a slip of the tongue from one of the guards, who saw the girl passing in the hallway.

So it had been a big day. Kim had sat rocking seven-year-old Angela for half an hour, when finally the little girl had run off to her dormitory, not to be seen since.

Dinner had been ramen noodles. Curry took too much energy for today.

"Any bets on which it'll be?" Soul asked finally.

"Professor Stein and Miss Marie's kid?" I asked, unsure if the correct title for the kind woman was still 'Miss' if using only her first name. "Weapon, I hope. Electricity-based arms are rare."

"Huh. Surprised you'd say that, being a cross yourself," he replied, rinsing his plate and leaving it in the sink.

"Well, it's not like it'll turn out like me. We hope not," I noted. "The only reason my weapon gene awakened was because I was infected with the black blood. From you. And since the Professor has such fragile sanity in the first place, his child probably won't either, so he-slash-she might not be able to control it."

"I meant, you're a meister," Soul replied. "Primarily."

"Blair-chan doesn't care what kind of person she is," Blair informed us. "Blair just thinks it's good Marie gets to have a baby. She is a very nice person, and is a wonderful mother for Crona, even though she is only Crona's adopted mother." She grinned at us.

It always puzzled me that Blair was several hundred years old and not only kept the appearance of a young woman, but continued to speak only in broken, childish sentences. Not that she lacked intelligence, though one would think so upon first meeting her. She was actually quite insightful at times, such as when she wasn't acting like a stereotypical blonde ditz with an unhealthy passion for those of the opposite gender. I reminded her often that her hair was purple, please act like it, but she just gave me a puzzled glance and walked away every time.

In the four years since she'd moved in with us, I'd come to accept that Blair was a permanent fixture in our household. It had come to the point where I'd stopped being so surprised when she walked around the apartment stark naked, even when we had company. She burned every meal she ever prepared, and she got cat hair everywhere, but deep in my heart I loved the girl I'd come to think of as the closest thing I'd ever have to an older sister.

Blair wiped off the kitchen table while I washed dishes and Soul made a list of everything we needed from the grocery store. After she was done, our resident plumette promptly transformed into a small cat and jumped up onto the table she'd just cleaned.

I will never understand.

"Walking by," Soul told me as he tried to pass me in the slim hallway, but I'd already moved out of the way.

After a few minutes, Soul returned. "I have to go to the grocery store."

"I thought you were going tomorrow."

"Unless you want to spend the night without toilet paper, I'm still going," he replied.

I giggled a little bit, despite the unfortunate possible scenario he'd suggested. "All righty then. I'll take a shower while you're gone, the shop's just down the street." I looked at him. "It is your turn, right?"

"Yeah."

"Ok. Seeya in ten," I said, walking towards our one bathroom, tripping on the way. As I was falling, Soul caught my shoulder and prevented me from smashing my face on a doorknob.

He held up a wire. "Oh, lookie. Your iPod cable made you trip. It's a sign; you have to stop listening to that dubstep crap."

"Ha, ha." I glared at him, then slammed the bathroom door in his face.

"Have fun!" He called through the door.

I sighed.

"Blair-chan will go with Soul-kun to the grocery store so that Blair is not lonely here and Soul is not walking alone at night," I heard Blair squeak from the living room.

"Yeah, ok. I'll ride; you can fly on one of your freaky pumpkin things. Whatever."

"YOU GUYS HAVE FUN TOO!" I called to them dryly through the door. I heard them leave.

I stayed in the shower for longer than usual, enjoying the feeling of the hot water running down my back. Steam gathered, and my skin turned pink, but I didn't care. After a few minutes, though, the heat ran out, and I just turned off the spigot.

The feeling came right as I was getting dressed. I was already in my pajamas, and it knocked the feet out from under me.

Soul.

I caught my breath and struggled to stand up against the impossible weight that seemed to press on me from all around. I stumbled out the door and ran down all four flights of stairs, fighting a blackness that danced at the edges of my vision. When I reached the parking lot, a small black cat was lying in the middle of the road.

"Blair?" I asked, picking up the small creature, recognizing the small white mark on her forehead that was usually hidden by her hat.

She wasn't wounded, physically, as far as I could see. There was no blood, she was just unconscious. One yellow eye slowly opened and blinked at me.

"Where's Soul?" I asked her, panicked.

She didn't get to respond, though, because I saw something lying on the ground a few feet off.

We are raised essentially from birth to find a person to trust above all else. And when we find that person, we are taught that their life is in our hands and that our lives are in theirs.

I was nine years old when I met the small albino boy who at that time had been known as Soul Evans. A week later, we'd moved into a school-supplied dorm a little ways from the Academy, and had never once been apart for more than an hour and a half at a time since. Not in almost eight years.

So when I saw that empty red and black scythe lying on the side of the road, the world disappeared.

I stared at it. I saw. There was no soul there. No soul, no Soul.

I picked it up. It hummed a bit at my touch, but fell lifeless after that.

I didn't feel my knees give out, but I felt my calves hit the gravel. My hands clasped and unclasped around the almost foreign object, searching for a sign of life. There was nothing.

It started raining. How cliché.

Dr. Stein would have loved to see this. He would have wanted to see how a weapon could be empty. Not a dead soul within, but still leave a body. It was once considered impossible. Apparently, not anymore.

Look at you.

I looked up. That was the voice of the Little Demon.

You lose the boy, and now look what you've become.

I thought that voice was gone.

Pathetic.

"Go away," I told it.

What are you gonna do, make me?

"I can't deal with you right now, just shut up!" I shouted to the nothingness. Blair, who had begun to approach, stepped back a bit.

That's right. You can't make me. You're not strong enough. Not by yourself!

That horrible sing-songy voice.

Come on, you know you're thinking it.

"What?" I spat.

How are you going to go on?

I didn't give the stupid creature the pleasure of an answer.

I looked down at my lap. I hadn't really realized I was crying; it didn't matter right now. But the tears themselves almost gave me a heart attack over the pseudo one I was already having.

They were black.

"Blair!" I called. The small cat looked up, eyes wide. "I need you to go find Blackstar. Now." She stared at me. "NOW!"

She was gone in an instant, a large glowing pumpkin disappearing into the sky.

The pounding around me was excruciating. It only got worse. I knew from stories I'd heard that harm or death of a weapon's soul could tear their meister apart, but this pain was so much worse than I'd thought.

I'd never prepared myself for this. No matter what he said about his damned "duty to protect me", I had had no intention of ever letting Soul get a paper cut. Maybe a hit to the head with a hardcover book here and there, but I and I alone had that privilege. He was my weapon; he was my responsibility.

And now I was holding a lifeless stick.

"What happened?" Came a voice. "I ran all the way here." Blackstar dropped his kusarigama and Tsubaki appeared.

"I don't know. I just came out here, and... There's no soul." I gritted my teeth and cleared my head. I didn't have just my emotions to think about here, I had to figure out what had happened.

It was so hard.

"What do you mean? Where is he?"

"I don't know! It's empty!" I screamed, and my blue-haired companion fell to his knees. Tsubaki put her arms around me, but it did nothing for the pain. It was so hard to stay conscious I could barely feel her presence. "You'll have to kill me," I told him.

"What?"

"I'm going mad, and soon I'll kill you if you don't. Or rather, my body will kill you." It hurt to say the words, but I had to. Wasn't the Little Demon right? It would be so hard to go on. I just didn't know how. "I was going to ask Blair, but I felt so much pain coming off of her, and I knew she wasn't strong enough to do it."

"Maka, I can't kill you. What are you, crazy already?" He demanded.

"No, but that's my point. I can't control the Black Blood." I slashed my hand with a blade from my arm and showed him where the obsidian liquid spewed out. "I can't do this without Soul."

There was silence for a good long while. We all knew it was true, and I was just waiting for him to get it over with.

"We have to find it," Blackstar snapped all of a sudden.

"It's not here!" I told him.

"That's the point! Someone took it, and if we can find it we..."

"Blair! Get the others!" I screeched, jumping to my feet. There is hope there is hope there is hope there is hope.

"On it!" And she was gone again.

I collapsed. I was so weak. So used to having that extra energy all the time that the moment it was gone I couldn't stand.

It felt like an eternity later that Tsugumi Harudori helped me to my feet, and Kim put a hand over my heart.

"Don't," I told her. "Don't take away the pain. Please."

She put her hand down.

"Everybody listen!" Blackstar shouted, and for once, everyone did. "Maka is really, really good at finding people, right?"

We nodded.

"So all of us are going to make a resonance link, and we're going to give her the power to find Soul, all right?"

"LET'S DO THIS!" Patty shouted, and glowed pink before transforming.

One by one, all of the weapons changed forms, and each meister put a hand on one of my shoulders. Crona quietly sobbed but put a hand on mine. I gripped my scythe and tried to form a link.

But Soul was always the center of it, wasn't he?

His music.

It couldn't work without his music, could it?

"Ragnarok!" Crona exclaimed, once realizing what was wrong. "Scream!"

A bloodcurdling screech filled the air, but it worked.

I felt Patty grasping for hope, the quiet determination of Anya, Tsubaki, and Kid, the more desperate struggle in Blackstar, the pain-driven steel that had miraculously appeared inside Crona. I knew them all.

We could do this.

We could.

Look at you all.

So much pain.

It was Kid who looked at me. Meme peered around curiously, wondering where the voice was coming from. Akane's eyes went wide with shock as he connected the dots.

I knew I had to make this fast. I couldn't risk spreading the black blood to all of them. The surge in power ebbed the pain, and I began my search.

I didn't know where to start. My hesitation is what did us all in.

Oh, this is so much easier than I'd thought. Thank you.

It was Patty, surprisingly, that went first. She started giggling, and I didn't know why. Her laughter morphed to a low, quiet, sadistic chuckle, and I tried to push Kid away as I realized what had happened. But Kid, too, was gone, his need for balance replaced with an endless greed for destruction. Liz was gone, feeling everything as a threat to her, Kid, and especially her sister. She wanted too badly to protect them, and soon all hope for her was lost.

Meme was next. I had expected her to be one of the most fragile. Her grip tightened on my shoulder, assertive but too much so.

Right after her was Anya. She and Soul had gotten along rather well, and she was far less optimistic than the others. She had lost the belief that we were capable of finding him, and she was gone. Tsugumi really, really tried to stay sane, but she was dragged in with her meister.

It was all dominoes from there.

At the loss of Tsugumi, Akane tried to pull her out but got sucked in as well, with Clay in tow. Kim, unable to supply energy and healing powers to all of us after such a sudden loss of half our forces, went down, and naturally Jackie lost it.

Ox fell to Akane's fate once Kim went under, and Kilik, trying to control his two weapons who didn't understand what was going on, exhausted himself.

Blackstar was so desperate, but he eventually lost the battle as well. His struggle to prove himself became a hunger to control the rest of us, and Tsubaki's ever-supportive attitude fueled him.

I guess it was he who knocked down Crona.

It didn't seem like Crona would last the longest, but I guess their longtime struggle with the black blood gave Ragnarok the edge. Then I realized- if Ragnarok was the one linking us together, the madness in me flowed through him and he would fall last before I would.

So when Crona went mad, I felt like my soul itself was being ripped apart. The pounding was one thing, but now I was actually being torn and stretched within myself.

I had to break away. I shook, but their hands held fast.

I went down.

But not before I saw where Soul's soul was.

It was so obvious.

Why hadn't I known?

The end!

Well, until next time. In a week or so?

Yes, I referenced Maka's liking of music Soul doesn't. We don't know what she listens to, but we do know it can't be jazz or classical. But I like dubstep. So dubstep it is.