"Eruka."

Eruka ignores the nagging voice, instead focusing on the scroll and circle sketch in front of her.

"Eruka."

Adding another note to her sketch, taking another glance at the spell, she does her best to block him out. The faster she works, the more easily she can avoid thinking about that little voice in the back of her head. The one that constantly chants: You can't. You're just a weak little frog witch. You can't.

"Eeeeruuukaaa."

She grips the pencil a little tighter in her hand but refuses to acknowledge Free. That is, until he begins poking her shoulder, accentuating every touch with a syllable of her name.

"E. Ru. Ka."

She whips around, glaring at him. "Yes, Free?" she snaps. Unfazed, the werewolf stares at her simply.

"Are you gonna take a break?" he asks. "You've been sitting here for hours."

"No," she replies promptly. "This is important."

Free glances at her work. "That looks complicated."

She nods pointedly. "It is. So can you leave-!"

"What does this mean?" Free interrupts, pointing at the sketch. Eruka rolls her eyes but clears her throat.

"That is the kronogram required to expand this spell beyond its predetermined limits and increase its size and strength exponentially," she explains. Her words, however, are met with a blank look from Free. Eruka can practically feel her patience dissolving. "It's the magic circle I need to travel through time for longer periods than what this spell suggests," she clarifies. "Basically, I'm taking this," she points to the scroll, "and making it better."

Free's eyes widen a little, and Eruka releases a small sigh when she realizes that he's finally understood.

"I didn't know you could do that," he says, a slight hint of awe in his voice. "Change and add on to spells like that."

She smiles slightly. "Well, it's easy if you know where to tweak it," she says while one of her hands idly fiddles with the brim of her hat. "Originally the spell is only supposed to keep you in another time for a few minutes. But if I enhance its performance with a spell circle, I can stay in other times for as long as I need."

Free deposits himself in the chair next to her, shaking the floor a little with his weight. Eruka panics for a split second when her inkwell almost tips over onto her sketch.

"Why do you want to time travel again?" Free wonders while Eruka grumbles to herself for a moment about how wolves are supposed to be graceful.

"Because," she says as she places the inkwell a suitable distance away from her parchment, "If I go back in time to change the past, I can keep the Reaper from winning, making the world safe for witches."

Free scratches his head. "Uh… From winning what?"

The question makes Eruka pause. She should know exactly what she wants to prevent. And yet, she can't quite put her finger on what she needs to do. She rushed into preparing the spell before she had much of a chance to think about what she should do with it.

What she needs is a game changer, she thinks. Something to upset the groundwork of the current timeline, ensure failure in the DWMA's fight against witches and kishin, and propose peace for every magic-user. But there's too many options, too many variables, too many potential targets. Should she try and prevent pieces of the timeline, or alter them? What should she change, and how would that change the present?

See, her thoughts say, louder now that she's not working. You know you can't do this.

She tries again to block it out.

"I'm not quite sure," she admits after a minute of silence, in which Free has managed to nearly spill himself from his chair by leaning back too far.

"Well, we could attack them," he proposes after righting himself. "In the past. So they don't attack us now, or in the closer past, or whenever you don't want them to."

Eruka shakes her head. "Not possible. We're two people, Free. Seven if you count the Mizune. Even all of Arachnophobia couldn't take down the DWMA," she murmurs.

Free chuffs. "That's just because they weren't aiming at the right places," he grins. "The DWMA just knows how to throw weapons around. If ya really want to kill someone, fight with your own claws and skills, and aim for the neck."

Eruka glances at him. "It's not like the entire system of the DWMA has a neck I can slice," she mutters.

Free returns the look with a shrug, idly picking something out of his teeth. "The backbone's the next best thing," he says. "Does the DWMA have a backbone?"

His tone implies that he's joking, but Eruka is quick to realize the genius behind his words. "Yes, it does," she says slowly, incredulously. Free raises one eyebrow.

"Really?"

"Yes, really," Eruka replies, almost knocking her chair over when she jumps up and runs over to Medusa's row of filing cabinets. She had found the folders tucked away in the drawers when searching for spells, stored alphabetically in neat little sections, like any good nurse would sort her paperwork. Initially Eruka had thought that they'd be no use to her. Now she whipped out one of the first papers, the tab on the top reading ALBARN, M, and tosses it onto the table for Free to see.

"The backbone of the DWMA," she states proudly, almost giddy at her own ingenuity as she opens the folder to display everything a nurse would need to know about a patient, "Is their meisters and weapons."

Free peers at the paper, frowning for a moment when he lays eyes on the student photo attached to the file with a paperclip.

"Hey, I remember her," he mutters, his voice almost a low growl. "She tried to kill me. Failed pathetically, but she tried to kill me."

Eruka smirks. "Then you may just get your chance at revenge," she says, pointing to one of the dates on the paper. "This document says that this day is the day she became partners with her weapon. So with that I can-!"

"Why would Medusa need that?" Free wonders out loud, interrupting her. She frowns.

"The faculty and staff of the DWMA send out cards to partners for the anniversary of their meeting," she explained quickly. "Do you not remember how many times Medusa complained about having to do it to keep her image?"

Free shakes his head, and Eruka suppresses a groan. "The point is," she says slowly, "All we have to do is prevent them from becoming partners. No strong teams, no backbone. No backbone, no DWMA. Simple enough?"

By the time she finishes, Free's fanged and malevolent grin stretches from ear to ear. "Got it," he chuckles.

"In the meantime," Eruka adds, quickly forming a plan, "I can use the original time spell to go to these dates and find the exact moment these partners formed their bonds," she says half to herself. "I can't change anything, though. With the spell in its current state, if I changed something, future me would cease to exist."

The grin suddenly falls from Free's face as his eyes grow wide. "Don't do that," he says quickly. Eruka stops to stare at him for a moment, shooting the werewolf an odd look. She could swear that he almost blushes when he avoids her gaze and mumbles, "I mean that that'd be bad. I, or future me, or present me or whatever, wouldn't exist either, right?"

"Right," she nods, shaking off whatever odd feeling he gave her a second ago. "I can't get past that problem until I complete the spell. But there'd be no point in fixing it without knowing where I'm supposed to travel to in the first place, so I should scope out possible targets first."

It's not worth it, five voices murmur behind her. Eruka barely avoids jumping at the sudden noise.

"They came in as quiet as a mouse," Free whispers to her, chuckling at his own joke. She shoots him a glare before she turns around to face the small witches.

"Why isn't it worth it, Mizune?" she says. "Of course it's worth it. This would save countless witches' lives."

The sisters glance at each other briefly. The next thing said is only spoken by one of them, the Mizune at the head of the group. She says Eruka's name slowly and quietly. Nothing good has ever happened to a witch that interfered with time, she reminds her. Doesn't she remember what happened to the last witch to tampered with time?

Eruka freezes. "Mabaa's daughter," she breathes.

"Mabaa doesn't have a daughter," Free says, oblivious. Eruka takes a breath to calm her nerves.

"She doesn't now," she murmurs. "The story of her daughter is supposed to be secret, but most every witch knows it. She erased herself from time hundreds of years ago. Only Mabaa was able to remember her, and she outlawed time travel." Eruka says, releasing her hold from the table when she realizes she's been gripping it. Her knuckles are white when she glances at them, her hands shaking slightly with fear.

Medusa never attempted this spell, even though she had it in her library, the Mizune speak together. A time spell would've benefitted her immensely, but even she knew it wasn't worth losing herself to time.

Eruka frowns. "Are you saying that I can't do something better than Medusa?"

The sisters pause. No… No, they didn't mean anything like that. It's just that it's really dangerous. For Eruka's safety, she should stay in her own timeline.

Her fists clench again, but out of anger rather than fear. "I can do this," she says, both to the Mizune and to that voice that's started its insults again. "I can be a greater witch than Medusa, I can change time, and I can survive doing it. And if you're not going to be helpful, you don't need to be in this lab." She juts her finger towards the door, hearing Free quietly say her name behind her, but she doesn't turn to face him.

The Mizune move closer together and share quick glances. Eruka watches as some unspoken command flitters through them right before they turn and walk out the door without another word.

Eruka stares after them for just a moment as her anger dies down. What's left feels like an empty hole without the support of her former closest friends.

"Free," she says quietly, finally turning to him. He looks up at her silently, unreadable but definite emotion in his brown eye. "I'll work better if I'm left alone."

He merely nods, hoisting himself from the table, following the Mizune's path out the door, and Eruka's left alone again. Alone with the voice.

Your friends don't believe in you. You should listen to them. They're right; you can't do this.

Eruka sets her jaw, trying to calm the shaking in her fists.

"Shut up," she hisses pointedly at no one. She whips around swiftly, snatching up the time spell. If she works as quickly as she can, maybe the voice will stop being as loud.


She's not sure how long she's been working when Free interrupts her again. She doesn't hear him at first; her ears haven't popped yet from her latest jump into the past.

"Eruka?"

She blinks when his voice finally reaches her, looking up at him, taking a moment to stick a finger in her ear as if she could simply unclog them.

"Are you doing okay?" She can barely hear him. "How long have you been at this?"

She winces when her ears suddenly clear. "Uh… I don't really know," she says, glancing at the clock on the wall. 1:42. "I keep going back in time, so that adds a lot of extra minutes. About three every trip, and I've lost track of how many times I've gone," she says, a yawn trailing her words.

Free's gaze travels to the mess of papers and notes sprawled across the table like the beginnings of an origami legion. "What are you even doing?" he wonders, sniffing some of the notes. "These reek of Reaper."

Eruka's quick to snatch the sheets from his claws. "That's because I wrote them near the Reaper's son. They were also in order," she mutters. As she smooths out the pile, she adds, "I've selected three significant weapon-meister pairs from Medusa's files: Meisters Maka Albarn, Black Star, and Death the Kid." She pauses for a second. "At least, I hope they're significant. I can remember Medusa talking about them. Anyway, theoretically it should be simple to find the day they chose their weapons, use the time spell to go to that date, and figure out exactly what she needed to do to stop them."

Free frowns. "Theoretically?" he says, leaving his question open. Eruka sighs in the middle of writing another note.

"The Reaper's son was difficult, but I've managed to gather enough information with an invisibility spell to know that his weapons had been criminals in New York up until a few months before they became partners," she says. "Black Star's was the easiest; he met his partner on the first day of school, like most students. But each required multiple short trips to the past, and…" she cuts herself off, biting her lip. She knows that if she finishes her sentence, telling him that her body is beginning to ache, he'd flip out.

His eyes narrow predictably. "And what?" he prompts her, his voice low. Eruka gulps.

"And it's hard, okay? Maka and her little scythe are being really hard to track down," she says. What she doesn't say is that Basic magic, skills witches are born with, take very little energy. But Addition magic, the kind written in spellbooks, is much more exhausting, and it's beginning to take its toll on her. "But I'll be fine."

Free's look clearly says that he doesn't believe her. "Really?" he says, sarcasm evident in his tone. "You have bags under your eyes, Eruka."

She gulps a little, the tiniest of croaks escaping her lips. As much as she hates the tiniest blemish on her complexion, her work is more important. Free's aware of the power of his words; that small smirk on the corner of his lip says it all. He's manipulating her on purpose.

"I know what I'm doing," she says forcefully, standing from her chair and grabbing the spell. "Now if you'll excuse me, I need to find out more about Maka Albarn."

Free's smirk falls. He only sits there staring at her as she whispers the spell to herself before the world becomes a blur. Time unravels around her, whirling past her with such force that her ears ring and her silver hair blows around her face.

When the whirring stops and she finally opens her eyes, she's standing once again in the streets of Death City. She takes a deep breath, quickly activating her Soul Protect before she sneaks into the maze of alleyways to find out what she can.


She always arrives back a split second after she left, though her trips take minutes. Free's always sitting there, watching her with an expression that seems almost sad as she moves over to the table to record her findings before traveling back again.

The words Eruka writes begin to blur on their pages. When she goes back to check what she's already jotted down, her own handwriting is so ragged that it's barely legible. Free's evidently given up trying to get her to stop, but he doesn't move from his seat beside her.

Each blink lasts longer. Her eyelids feel heavy, and opening them again after closing them takes much more effort than it should. She realizes that she must be drifting off, because one moment she's sitting at her desk, and the next she dreams that she's floating down the hall, high off the ground, surrounded by a sort of firm warmth.

She closes her eyes again, somehow hoping that if she falls asleep in her dream, she'll wake up in reality. But when she opens them next, she's gazing up at the ceiling in her room, a faint light coming from her bedside lamp.

Immediately she stiffens, her breath quickening, but a strong hand's quickly set on her shoulder.

"Shhh. Your work can wait," Free's voice murmurs. "And don't worry about your protection spells; I'll be awake all night right here. Okay?"

All Eruka can do is nod as her heartbeat slows again. She's too tired to do anything else, and sleep is quick to grab her once more.