Author's Notes- I swear I'm gonna be done with the very first day sooner or later. But not quite yet. And for this installment, I have a surprise! In the form of Kami! Yeah, she's still around... for now. *cackles*

Perspective

Kami Albarn, née Watanabe, tapped her fingers frenetically against the steering wheel of the shiny black sedan. The quiet idling of the engine formed a soothing background to her nervous impatience. Her daughter should have been there fifteen minutes ago; they had agreed to meet in front of the school at six.

She knew there wasn't really a material reason to be worried. Eighteen years previously she had been in her daughter's shoes, a brand new meister fresh off the plane and in search of a partner. She had even attended this same event the weekend before class commenced. She knew how easy it could be to get caught up in the search for a worthy weapon. Kami wondered if Maka would have better luck than she had back then. She kind of doubted it.

Maka was an ambitious girl, no doubt about it. Kami was proud of that- the drive her daughter had inherited from her was one of her most positive traits, as far as she was concerned. She couldn't help but think, though, that it might work against her in this case. Maka had told her repeatedly that she wanted to be a scythe-meister just like her mama. It was a flattering sentiment and made something in Kami's chest glow happily, but she couldn't help but caution her little girl not to get her hopes up. She hadn't had a chance to look over the list of incoming new weapons, but the odds of a scythe being among them were slim at best. Maka likely wouldn't find the ideal partner she'd been dreaming of practically since she'd precociously announced- at the tender age of five, no less- that she was going to be the best meister Shibusen had ever seen.

But it wasn't like there were no other options available to her. Kami hadn't seen the list, but she knew for a fact that the Duprés' youngest daughter was starting this year, and Maka could do a lot worse than being a lantern-meister. Or... there were rumors that a child of the Nakatsukasa family had come to the academy. Kami wasn't sure if this was true, because the Nakatsukasas were almost as famous for their reclusiveness as they were for their rare weapon-skills, but if it was true, that person would certainly be a suitable match for Maka. Kami had always harbored a secret desire to work with a Nakatsukasa for a partner. Well, maybe she would get the chance sometime soon...

Ah, there was Maka. Kami smiled at the sight of her daughter in her button-down shirt and pleated skirt; she was so enthusiastic about her new school uniform and it had been impossible to convince her that she didn't actually need to wear it until Monday.

Kami knew her daughter and could read her body language quite well, and there was no mistaking the pleased bounce in her step as she all but flew down the steep stairs. A bittersweet feeling welled up within her, because her little girl wasn't so little any more no matter how tiny she was, and she had almost definitely just met her first weapon.

Maka yanked open the door and flung herself into the car. "Hi, Mama!" she exclaimed. "I'm sorry I'm late. I lost track of time, and-"

"It's fine. I know how it can be." She smiled at the blonde girl as she buckled her seatbelt. "Be careful on those stairs, okay? They're steep and you shouldn't take them so fast."

"I know, I'm sorry," Maka said repentantly. "I'm just excited."

Kami restrained a smile at her daughter's enthusiasm as she put the car in gear and pulled out of her parking space. "I take it it went well, then?"

Maka absolutely beamed. "Yes. I found a partner!"

"That's great. Tell me all about her!"

"Him, actually," Maka said.

Kami had to resist the urge to take her eyes off the road to stare openly at her. She was not oblivious, and she knew only too well that she herself was not the only one who had been pushed to her emotional limits by her so-called husband and ex-partner's extracurricular pleasures. Maka was smart and observant and as much as Kami had tried to shield her from Spirit's philandering, she hadn't really succeeded. Over the last few years, her young daughter had not been shy about proclaiming her loathing for boys, and it didn't take a genius to work out where those feelings came from. Kami had actually begun to worry about it, but the fact that Maka had partnered with a young man with apparently no hesitation... well, that was reassuring. Maybe Spirit hadn't completely fucked up their daughter after all.

"Oh? Well then, tell me all about him," she rejoined as neutrally as possible.

Maka cocked her head to one side, watching the streets of Death City passing by out the windshield. "I'm not quite sure how to describe him," she said, sounding genuinely puzzled. "He's... interesting."

Leave it to Maka to try (however feebly) to get right to the meat of things and disregard other important details. "What's his name?" she prodded gently.

"Soul. His name is Soul Eater."

Kami wasn't entirely certain that her eyes weren't popping out of her head. "Oh really? That's... unusual."

"I like it," Maka said decisively. "It kind of fits him."

She didn't know if she wanted to know what that meant, under the circumstances.

"He's a scythe," her daughter continued. "I told you I was going to be a scythe-meister, didn't I?"

"You certainly did. Is that why you picked him?"

Maka shrugged. "That's why I was interested. He kinda left the mixer early and I followed him because somebody pointed him out and said he was a scythe. But mostly it was just him. I don't know, there was something about him..." She pursed her lips thoughtfully. "He's very different. Kind of arrogant, but that's not all there is to him."

Kami pulled smoothly into the driveway of the tidy house Spirit's salary as a Death Scythe had afforded them, and as she put the car in park, she glanced curiously at her daughter. Maka, oblivious, continued to chatter away about her new partner, apparently spilling every tidbit the boy had shared about himself.

"I think he thinks he's really cool, but I think he's just a weirdo," she announced as she followed her mother indoors.

This, Kami decided, would require a little bit of investigation.

It didn't take much. Before dinner (takeout, because Kami was good at many things but cooking was not one of them) she placed a quick phone call to Jim in the registrar's office and called in that favor he owed her. Her request was simple: she wanted a copy of the file belonging to a demon scythe by the name of Soul Eater. Jim promised to get the information sent to her as soon as possible, and with this assured in her mind, she set about getting her daughter fed.

Once Maka's bedtime had rolled around (and without so much as a phone call from Spirit; Kami thought it was indicative of quite a few things that Maka didn't even bother to ask where her father was), Kami slipped out to the office and flicked on the desktop computer she and Spirit shared. A quick check of her email confirmed that Jim had come through for her. Being a very influential meister and the former partner of Shinigami-sama's current weapon (not to mention having saved Jim's life on more than one occasion) had its perks.

She set about skimming the information on her daughter's new partner, and was mildly surprised by what she found. Soul Eater's name was actually Soul Evans, the younger son of a pair of extremely wealthy society types from Connecticut. There was a notable age gap between Soul and his elder brother. The family were apparently known for their musicality; prodigies were common enough in the family to be almost expected. According to Shibusen's records, the weapon gene had come in through the mother's side, although there hadn't been an actual manifest weapon in the family for almost two hundred years.

Soul's academic record from the private school he had attended for his primary education (Woodlawn Fine Arts Academy, which in Kami's opinion was a rather pretentious name for an elementary school) was nothing particularly noteworthy. He wasn't a poor student, but nor were his grades anywhere near as sterling as Maka's impeccable records. No notable behavioral issues beyond the kind of hijinks that were to be expected from a young boy, although there was a note on his records from the school's staff psychologist. It wasn't anything earth-shattering, just a concern that had been relayed from the school to the Evans family when Soul was about six years old that he seemed to have difficulty socializing successfully with the other students. The letter was dry and to the point. The boy was perfectly capable of interacting normally with his peers if forced to, but the good doctor was of the opinion that he was unusually shy. It was brought to the family's attention, apparently, because Soul was being prepared for a performance career and given how much of a hindrance excessive shyness could be in that field, they would of course want to take steps to address this issue immediately.

Well. Given that Soul was about to begin training to hunt witches and kishins, Kami could take an informed guess as to how well that performance career was working out.

There wasn't much else of note in the file. His initial soul evaluation was promising, with the potential to become an enormously powerful weapon in the hands of the right meister, although there were concerns about finding someone whose wavelength would be compatible. It appeared that, based on the practical evaluation, his wavelength was a bit tricky to match and rejected the attempts of several senior staff members to achieve pre-resonance. The last update on the file, which was time-stamped only a few hours previously, noted that Soul Eater Evans had been successfully partnered with meister Maka Albarn. The comments from Ygraine Roman, who had overseen the forging of partnerships among new students this year, indicated optimism that their wavelengths would be highly compatible if sufficient effort was put into developing the bond.

It was at about this point that Spirit arrived home. He wandered into the office and wrapped his arms around her chest from behind, nuzzling into her neck. He wasn't drunk but there was scotch on his breath, and he smelled of some slut's perfume. Kami's spine went rigid. He couldn't even be bothered to hide it anymore, damn him...

"Good evening, my beautiful wife," Spirit mumbled against her skin.

Gods, hadn't he gotten enough of that from whatever whore he'd found at the cabaret?

"Go away," she said, hating herself for her automatic reaction to his sensual tone. Even now that she'd realized whatever love she once thought she felt for this man was nothing more than the foolish infatuation of a teenage girl, the powerful attraction that had drawn them together hadn't faded.

Spirit might be a faithless dog, but she couldn't deny that he at least respected her enough to back off. "What are you looking at?"

"The file on your daughter's new weapon," she replied casually.

She could practically hear Spirit's hackles raise. "What? Her weapon? She has a weapon? Who is it?"

Kami clenched her fists to keep herself from hitting him. "If you had been home for dinner, you could have heard all about it from her," she said coolly. "I suggest you wait until morning. I'm sure she wants to tell her papa the exciting news in person."

Watching his reflection in the glare cast on the computer monitor, she saw his posture wilt. "Yeah..." He slumped away, metaphorical tail between his legs, and Kami felt a stab of vicious satisfaction when he paused in the doorway and muttered a sullen "goodnight."

Once she heard the sound of his (not "their," not anymore) bedroom door closing, she turned back to what she'd been doing before his intrusion. She scrolled through the last few items in the file, mostly just medical records and other relatively uninteresting minutiae she didn't read in detail; she wanted to make sure her daughter had an acceptable partner, not invade a stranger's privacy that deeply.

The last item in the file was the current photo that had been taken at the start of orientation for Soul's student ID. This, she studied much more carefully than the previous items. If Maka's new weapon had an unusual name, his appearance was at least equally so. He appeared to have inherited some form of albinism, if the messy shock of stunningly white hair and deep crimson eyes were anything to judge by. His features were still young and boyish, but she could see that he would likely be quite handsome once he'd grown up a bit. That set off a distant alarm or two, but she tried to repress it, knowing it was her own paranoia relating to pretty-boy weapons talking. She studied the tight-lipped smirk taking up residence on Soul Eater's face in place of a smile, and fancied that she could see something bitter in the boy's eyes.

Kami sighed, closed the file, and sat back in her chair with a tired groan. This scythe boy made her nervous, but she thought it might just be a maternal thing. She would reserve judgment until she'd had a chance to speak to him and find out what he was really made of.