A/N: Sorry for the impromptu hiatus, guys! But I just recently got back into Soul Eater again, and with renewed passion (lol) so an update was definitely in order.

This chapter is a bit slow, but necessary to lay the ground work for the rest of the story. Chapter three's already in progress and it won't be eight months before I feel like updating again, pinky swear.

Warnings: language and content, I guess? Also, this isn't edited yet, because I'm rushing to go to work…sooo…will edit later. Forgive any errors, for now.

Disclaimer: SushiBomb does not own Soul Eater. This is written solely to entertain. Any unrecognizable characters belong to me.


Behind Closed Doors


Even at sunset, the streets of Brooklyn in the summertime were sweltering. It made Liz question why she had bothered to even wear a jacket over her tank top in the first place. At the present, her jacket was only serving as a hindrance, not only making her sweat, but was also sliding down her shoulder, forcing her to repeatedly shove it back into place.

They had been running for quite some time; if she had to guess, they'd gone about twelve or thirteen blocks already, and although the muscles in her calves were burning like hell and her heart was ready to explode out of her chest, Liz forced herself to keep going until they reached the safety of the shelter.

"Sis?" Patty asked quietly.

"Yeah?" Liz panted back.

"Do you wanna switch for a while? You've been running for a long time."

Despite everything, Liz's face softened at the concern in her sister's tone. "No, it's alright. We're almost there. I want you to stay in your gun form 'til we get to the shelter. Bertha's probably still got that spare room for us, I hope. Once we're behind those heavy doors, that weirdo can't get us, so don't worry."

"Okay…" She heard Patty mutter begrudgingly. After that, the younger Thompson sister went silent, leaving Liz alone with her thoughts as she rounded a corner. After nearly ten minutes, the shelter finally came into view. Liz heaved a mighty sigh, relief momentarily quelling the ache of her body. She leaned tiredly against the streetlight as she waited for it to turn green so she could keep going.

She pressed a hand over her heart, which was still beating wildly. "…Fuck, I really need to quit smoking…" She panted, still trying to catch her breath.

As the light turned green and the walking sign came on with it, Liz began walking across the street. She tucked her hands into her jean pockets, breathing deeply in order to calm herself down. And just as she felt herself returning to normal, she spotted a mass of black somewhere in her peripheral vision.

"Shit, he found us already?!" She muttered to herself, her panic returning with renewed fervor. Liz sped up. The shelter was right there, if could just get there before…

Cautiously, she peaked over her shoulder, her eyes scanning the surrounding area quickly before finally letting out another sigh of relief. As it turned out, it wasn't the strange boy from before, just the new kiddy ride the owner of the supermarket had installed in front of his store. Liz wiped her damp forehead. Her nerves were going to be the death of her, one day.

"Lizzy?" Patty asked, her voice groggy. She had been napping.

"It's fine, Patty, go back to sleep. False alarm."

The doors to the shelter were just as heavy and rickety-looking as they had been last time. As much as she insisted that they were going to eventually be fixed, Bertha just didn't have the time or the money to fix them like she wanted. But that didn't matter all that much at the moment. They did their job well enough, and to Liz, that was the most important thing. She and Patty had made an agreement, many years ago, that they would only stay there if it was an absolute emergency.

And a kid dressed in creepy skulls that knew about their weapon forms and was probably on their tails at that very moment definitely constituted an emergency, as far as they were both concerned. Patty shifted back into her human form just as Liz pushed open the door, looking up and down the block for any sign of life before deciding she didn't really care and instead opted for stretching tiredly and following her older sister inside.

"Bertha? Yo, you here?" Liz shouted as she closed the door behind them. A few moments later, a large older woman came out from one of the back rooms, wiping her glasses on the front of her button up shirt.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm comin', just a minute." She muttered, her voice raspy from years of chain-smoking; a habit that she had clearly not let up if the freshly lit cigarette dangling from between her lips was anything to go by.

"Girls, long time no see." The old woman said when she finally put her glasses back on and saw them for the first time. Liz stood there in front of her, her expression grim and exhausted and looking like she definitely needed a cigarette or two. Patty poked her head out from behind her sister, waving in greeting but looking just as worn out.

"Must'a been a helluva mess for you two'ta show up 'ere, hmm?"Bertha said, letting out a laugh which was quickly followed by a loud, congested cough.

"Yeah," Liz muttered before she reached into her bag, pulling out a few packs of cigarettes. "I stole you some cigarettes. You like menthol, right? Those were the only ones I could get." She said as she handed them over. Bertha smiled good-naturedly, letting her question drop. It seemed to be a touchy subject this time around. As long as they had her smokes, it didn't really matter that much anyway."I'll smoke what I can get, hun. Beggars can't be choosers."

She turned towards the stairs. "There's the usual room for you two upstairs. Third'ta last one on the left, alright?"

"Thanks." Liz said with a tired smile.

"Who do I have'ta look out for this time?" Bertha asked, taking a long drag of her cigarette. Before Liz could answer, Patty jumped in. "This freaky kid in a black suit! He looks like a fuckin' ghost!"

Bertha's eyes widened in faint amusement. "A ghost, eh?"

Liz rolled her eyes before pushing her sister up the stairs in front of her. "Must be some cracked out goth-wannabe or something. Lotsa skulls and stuff. But let's just say he knows some things about us that he shouldn't, so we're gonna lay low tonight."

"Well," Bertha began, exhaling a thick cloud of smoke as she did so, "you two can sleep easy. If anyone lookin' like that comes 'round, I'll ghost him, ya get me?" She said, patting the handgun holstered under her shirt.

"Thanks, Bertha." Liz said, rubbing her arm to warm herself as she turned to ascend the old wooden staircase. "I'll swipe more smokes for you when I can, alright?"


"Lizzy…I'm hungry…" Patty moaned from her spot on the dingy carpet, her stomach growling loudly for the third time since they arrived. Liz rolled her eyes. Not out of irritation at her sister, but at the fact that in her haste to run away from the boy earlier, she chucked his wallet back at him to distract him.

Her expression soured.

Why hadn't she thought to grab the money he had in there out before running?

Liz let her face fall forward onto the window pane with a soft 'thunk'. That had not been one of her better ideas, and now she and her sister were feeling the repercussions. Her stomach growled loudly right after Patty's, reminding her of her failure. But they would have to go hungry tonight, because that skull-boy was still out there somewhere, waiting for them to come out of hiding.

Liz felt a shiver creep through her body.

"You two have been causing DWMA quite a bit of trouble, you know. My father has been tracking you two for some time now."

His words echoed in her mind, jarring it with questions she wasn't sure she wanted the answers to.

What was the DWMA? Was that some sort of police organization, like the FBI or something? Who was he? And, for that matter, who was his father?

And to think, someone had been tracking them all this time. The thought of being on someone's radar made Liz shake with paranoia. He had known exactly who they were, and where to find them. And…

She looked over her shoulder at her sister, who was lying quietly on the dirty carpet. Patty was huffing and bored to tears, picking the loose threads out and trying to ignore her rumbling stomach.

He knew that they were weapons.

Liz suddenly felt dizzy. This was the last thing the two of them needed right now.

"That skull bastard was kinda cute though, huh sis?" Patty said suddenly, snapping her older sister out of her spiraling thoughts. It was funny to see Liz sputter in anger and embarrassment, no matter what the situation. And at least to that effect, it made Patty feel somewhat better to see Liz blushing instead of looking like she was about to cry.

"What? P-patty! That guy might be trying to kill us for all we know, and you wanna talk about how cute he is?!"

Patty didn't answer right away, instead settling for laughing loudly at her sister's beet-red face.

"You did think he was hot though, I know you did!" Patty said between giggles, which graduated back into loud guffaws when a pillow came flying at her face.

"I did not, don't be stupid!"

"Yeah, you did! You said you were gonna shoot his thing off. You always say that to guys you think are hot, sis!"

"I do?" Liz shrieked, mortified.

Patty giggled louder. "Yep, you do."

Despite the burning of her cheeks, a small grin suddenly graced Liz's face. She understood then what her younger sister was trying to do, because it was something Patty was good at doing. Patty always did her best to ease Liz's anxieties by laughing and making light of their situation, no matter how grim it looked, and for that, Liz was grateful. Somehow they always managed to get out of whatever mess they landed themselves in, and she believed a large part of that was because Patty's refusal to be afraid of anything often gave her a false sense of bravery.

Besides, Patty did have a point.

The whole Goth thing aside, Liz had to admit that he wasn't hard on the eyes at all.

She almost dared to say that he was charming, in a macabre sort of way. His mannerisms were confident and refined, and under any other circumstance, Liz would've found the way he nonchalantly swaggered into the alley way, without the slightest hint of fear or concern, quite attractive. His eyes were burned permanently in her mind, glowing like two white-hot embers in a fireplace. They were scarily intense, regardless of his expression, but there was something strangely comforting about them as well. They weren't the eyes of someone who wanted her and her sister dead, for once.

But that didn't change the fact that he was a clear danger to them. He was hunting them down and, Liz thought, her frown returning just as quickly as it had left, it was only a matter of time before he caught up to them again. It was obvious now- and it should've been obvious then, too -that he had only been toying around with them before.

He wasn't stupid or faking bravery at all, Liz realized the more the she thought back. He knew what he was doing, and he wasn't scared, because he had no reason to fear them. But then, that in turn made her wonder.

Was he really that confident she wouldn't shoot him? Or did he have some means of protecting himself, on the not-so-slim chance that she did? After all, someone like him, who apparently knew so much, surely must've also been aware that they didn't fire actual bullets, but their own compressed soul wavelengths, right?

From the way he was talking; hinting at something with his strange questions and rebuttals, it sounded like he did. His voice still resonated in her ears, the smooth baritone humming in and out like a wordless, burlesque tune; one that Liz didn't care to even try to push out of her thoughts. She rather liked his polite manner of speaking, snarky and condescending as he was.

Even so, it made her wonder just what sort of methods he would use to counter something like a soul wavelength being fired point-blank into his body. It also made her question whether Bertha would be able to fend him off with simply her handgun, if he happened to know where they were hiding, which Liz had a sneaking suspicion that he did.

She clutched at her head in pain.

Obsessing about it was doing nothing but giving her a headache, so she opted to push all thoughts of the boy and his freaky skulls and him chasing them out of her mind and instead lay down on the floor next to her sister. But not before closing the old, patchwork curtain on the window shut, blocking out the orange light of the nearly set sun and leaving only the dim light of the lone bulb hanging from the ceiling.

"Sis," Patty began tiredly as she flipped onto her back, "I could go for a pizza slice from Mangenello's right about now…"As if on cue, her stomach rumbled loudly. Ignoring her own empty stomach, Liz mimicked her sister, also laying down on her back.

"Yeah, me too. Sorry I didn't grab the money. I freaked."

She felt Patty's hand on her arm then, rubbing it softly as if to say, 'it's alright. You don't have to explain.'

"It's cool, sis." She said after a moment, digging something out her pocket, "We still have this, after all."

Liz turned her head. Patty was holding a gaudy-looking platinum ring to the light, watching with childish fascination at the way the light glinted off of the precious metal, as well as the large diamond set in the middle. Patty turned to her sister, giggling impishly as she tossed to ring up and caught it again. "Bet that mafia dude is missing this right about now, huh?"

Feeling her previous anxiety slowly ebb away, Liz laughed out loud. "Sucks to be him."

She rolled over onto her side, cradling her head in her hand. "How much do you think we can get for it, anyway? That thing's gotta be worth like five grand, at least."

Patty made a curious noise as she rolled the ring around in her fingers, contemplating it. "I dunno, it might be more than that, depending on which pawn shop we go to."

"In any case," Liz said before yawning loudly, "We sure as hell can't sell it to anyone around here. No one's gonna buy it if they recognize it. We can catch the bus up to Long Island. Or maybe New Jersey…I dunno, we'll figure it out tomorrow."

"What about skull-boy?" Patty asked, all of the humor from before drained from her voice. "What happens if we run into him again?"

Liz sighed. "I'm scared as hell, Patty. But we can't just stay here, hiding like a couple of pussies. We gotta take a chance while we can. We cash in on that ring tomorrow, then we get the hell out of New York for a while."

Patty's eyes drifted down to the dingy blue carpet beneath them, thinking for a moment before nodding and standing up, her expression giving away her apprehension.

Liz didn't blame her. It was easier said than done.

But, what other choice was there?


"Kid, your stripes are as cute as ever!"

Despite the fact that his father made a habit of pointing out the hideously asymmetrical sanzu lines every time they spoke, Kid's hands automatically flew to his hair, covering it in embarrassment.

"Father, please. You know I hate it when you say that." He said exasperatedly. His father really was too carefree sometimes.

"How's the Big Apple? Did you get me a T-shirt like I asked? And one of those little bobble-heads too? Did you eat any pizza yet?" Death asked excitedly, getting closer and closer to the mirror with each question, until the white mask and gloves were smashed against the glass.

"Father, I'm not here on vacation, you know." Kid said, arms folded across his chest in annoyance; annoyance which quickly turned into resignation when he noticed his father's shoulders slump forward.

"Yeah, I know, but, you know you can't go to New York and not come back with some souvenirs or eat the food!"He whined.

Kid rubbed his neck tiredly. They'd only been speaking for about two minutes and he was already exhausted. Exhausting was a good word for his father, he thought with a discreet eye roll. Nonetheless, he quickly gave in to his father's infectious enthusiasm. "I had some pizza for lunch earlier," he muttered, "It was pretty good…"

"Ooooh, I wish I could be there too!" Death whined with jealousy. Kid cleared his throat. "Father, may I give you my report now please?"

Death sighed at his son's all-business demeanor. Kid really needed to loosen up sometimes.

The death god settled back, shoulders once again slumping in resignation.

"Alright then," he acquiesced after a moment, "what's going on so far?"

Kid sat back against the headboard of the hotel bed, relaxing tiredly against it with the mirror propped up against his thighs. "Well, I found them."

"Already?!" Death exclaimed, impressed with his son's surprising efficiency.

Kid shrugged. "Once I did a bit of asking around and found out what kind of people they were, it wasn't really that hard. Although…" Kid paused momentarily to rub his still sore head, "The stories you've told me about them don't do them any justice at all. My head is still throbbing from when the older sister clubbed me with her gun."

Death propped his head in his giant hands, nodding in interest. "Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, go on, go on."

Kid's eye twitched when his finger came back tinged with red. He hadn't been aware that he was bleeding. "Tch, that Amazon…" He muttered angrily. The wound was healed, but that didn't change the fact that he'd have to wash his hair again.

"What happened?" Death asked.

"Knowing what you know about our dear sisters, I think you can guess. They tried to mug me."

"Unsuccessfully, from the sound of it."

Kid shook his head. "On the contrary. They were entirely successful, until I made their actual situation clear. It wasn't my intention to scare them, but the older sister, Elizabeth, screamed and threw my wallet-" Kid rubbed his cheek with an annoyed glower, "-at my face, of course, before running away."

Death snorted into his hand. The death god immediately shrank back however when he felt his son's frigid glare on him. Death held his hands up in bemused surrender. "Okay, okay, sorry!"

"This is hardly a laughing matter, father." Kid snapped. "Regardless, I'll simply have to try again tomorrow."

"And what if they try to run again?" Death asked. Kid could almost hear the amused smirk in his father's tone. A mask suited the god just fine, because his tone was expressive enough.

Kid sighed. "I wasn't expecting it last time, so they caught me off guard. But I'm a Death God. They won't be getting away this time around. We can't allow weapons that use their powers for crime to run around unchecked. Of course," A tiny smirk crept onto the young death god's face. "I know where they are right at this moment, and it would be easier to catch them when their guard is down, but…"

"But?" Death pressed.

Kid's smirk turned earnest. "That's beneath a Death God to be so underhanded, don't you think?"

"Wha-oh, OH! Yeah, of course, you're right! That's not the way to go about things, no way!" Death said quickly, earning a strange look from his son.

Kid shook his head. "Anyway, that's my report for now. I'm turning in for the night."

Death nodded. "Mm. Thanks for your hard work. Good luck tomorrow, Kid."

"Thank you, father."


Again, sorry for both the delay, and the lack of action this chapter. Things will really pick up from this point on, however, so don't worry!