Disclaimer:
DR: Maka, I'm busy with this fanfic, so can you do me a huge favor?
Maka: What?
DR: Can you go to your creator and tell him I'll bet his ownership of you that I'll finish this fanfic today?
Maka: Are you crazy or something?
DR: To put it bluntly...YES!
Maka: Yeah, well, it was clever, but, nice try.
Chapter 4: The Hunt Part 2
Soul's heart bolted along with his legs when he heard Maka scream. He couldn't let her get hurt any more than she already was. He dashed towards the center of the city, following the continued screams. As he got closer to her, her shrieks grew louder, making him run faster. At some point, he began running so fast, he lost his footing and fell. He managed to break his fall, at the mere cost of cutting open both of his hands and feeling something crack in his left wrist. Ignoring the pain, he got right back up and kept running.
Each time Maka screamed, Soul's stomach twisted into another knot and his heart skipped another beat. Maka...hang in there,I'm coming! he thought, as though she could hear him somehow, followed by a short prayer: Please, let Maka be alive when I find her!
Soul's hopes were shattered when Maka's next scream was cut off, but he just kept running. For all he knew, she'd gotten away. Finally, Soul found the origin of where the screams had been coming from, and it stopped him in his tracks. He was...outside the DWMA! He had climbed the stairs without even noticing it...but, wait-!
Nuh-uh! I was...I was THAT close to her? And I just kept getting farther! She was RIGHT HERE the whole damn time?
"Oh, Soul Eater..." came a sweet, singsong voice, a female one. It had a slight lilt to it...British, maybe? Soul looked up to see a shrouded figure standing on the middle point of the school, on the very edge. He couldn't see who it was, they were in a black hooded cloak, but he could clearly see the unconscious person they were holding. They held her by her waist with one arm, and used the other to hold a sword to her throat.
"Maka!" Soul cried with the breath that he still had.
"'Bout time you got here," the girl holding Maka's limp body said, "I've been holding this girl up here for nearly three and a half hours."
"What did you do to Maka?" he yelled, clenching his fists.
"Hmm? Oh, this?" She adjusted Maka a little. "Oh, she was starting to scream, so I bumped her on the head to shut her up."
"What do you want her for?"
"Mmm...nothing much. I only want her for my, ah, collection."
Soul shivered at the way she said "collection."
"C-collection of what?" he almost didn't want to know, but he had to find out.
"Mm? Oh! Don't you know? I'm going to kill her. I want her soul."
Soul gasped, then glared. "Oh, no you fucking don't!"
"Oh? And how are you going to stop me, silly? You see, you can't very well get her down from there, you're a short-range weapon. But if you try to come up here by climbing the stairs inside...I'll drop her."
There was a silence. Then, the woman adjusted Maka so that she tilted her head up, and placed the sword to her neck.
"So, Soul Eater, how does she die? Does she fall? Or does she go the hard way?" to demonstrate what "the hard way" was, she pressed the sword to Maka's neck, allowing a few drops of blood to roll down her skin. The liquid painted deep red marks that made Soul's breath hitch.
Shit! Now what do I do?
"Tick, tock, tick, tock, Soul..." she murmured. There was silence for a long time as Soul considered how to save his meister...with only an hour and a half left.
Finally, the cloaked figure grew impatient with Soul's silence. He was sure that if he could have seen her face, she would have been scowling. At last, she spoke.
"Soul...do you really care for your meister as much as you're showing?"
Soul was taken aback. "What do you mean? Of course I care for her!"
Another short silence. "That's not what I meant, and you know it."
"I know what you mean. You want to know if I love her."
"Very good, Soul. I'm smiling."
Suddenly, something hit Soul as off-balance. Something was wrong, but he wasn't sure what. All he knew was that something very subtle had been skewed. If Maka were conscious, she would have missed it by a mile.
"So?"
That one word from the woman's mouth threw everything into perspective for Soul.
"You're hiding something," he said.
"Mm?" she sounded confused. "What are you talking about?"
"You're not speaking with that funny accent anymore!"
The woman gasped.
"That's right!" Soul cried, "You're hiding your identity because you're someone I know, aren't you? Who the hell are you?"
After a couple seconds of consideration, the woman pulled her sword away from Maka's still-bleeding neck and let go of her waist. Maka's cloak flapped like birds' wings as she plummeted almost two hundred feet. Soul's heart stopped. He leaped forward and up at the same time the hooded figure jumped down, catching Maka tightly in his arms at the very last second, his back slamming into the ground painfully. When he regained his breath at last, he looked over Maka's still-limp body. His heart rate finally slowed upon finding that her pulse was still there. She appeared to be breathing alright. But it was that little nick in her skin, just a little above her collarbone, that had him worried.
The sound of boot-clad feet hitting the pavement passed through deaf ears as Soul gently traced faint tear-stains on Maka's sleeping, peaceful face. What if he did love her? What other reason would he have for putting himself in mortal peril to make sure she survived? If he didn't love her, then why would he be out here, lying with her tiny, unconscious form on his chest, her cloak strewn all over the place?
It was the sword at his throat that snapped him from his trance. He followed its silvery blade, spotted with blood in places, up to the hood of the cloaked figure. The hand that held the hilt of the sword was long and slender, and he thought he saw...a fake nail? He didn't have much time to focus on that. The woman spoke again, quietly, frighteningly.
"You risked getting crushed to save her bones from shattering..."
Soul remained silent, glaring. The woman only grunted and continued.
"I'm sure you're quite aware that I'm not going to make this easy for you? You still have to fight for her, you know."
Soul gently laid Maka's body on the ground, being very mindful of her head. Then, he stood up, the pre-dawn wind sending his hair every which way. He glared at the woman, the two circling around an imaginary center point, Soul bringing out his scythe arm.
"Are you kidding? I'm ready to die for my meister if I have to!"
The woman chuckled. "Then you're hopeless. Hopelessly in love!" she yelled, throwing herself at him. Soul was ready for her, bringing up his arm to defend his face. But, to his amazement, she used his scythe arm as a platform, leaping over his head and into the night sky. As she came down, her sword pointed down at his head, she tugged on her hood to hide her face as she came down on him like a meteor. He quickly dived out of the way, spinning so that he was behind her, and he swung at her back. He managed to make a minor cut in her cloak, but she quickly reared back, twirling on her heel and swinging at him again. He kept diving backwards, being mindful to leap over Maka's body before he stepped on her. His assailant hesitated only a moment, before lifting her sword and swinging down onto Maka's unconscious form. As fast as his body would allow him, Soul leaped over Maka, blocking the blade with his arm again, causing much pain to him again, though he ignored it.
C'mon, man...f-for Maka!
They were at a standstill. The woman raised her sword and hit him over the head with the hilt, knocking him to the side, grasping his bleeding head. When he rolled back over to protect Maka, the hooded woman had her under her arm.
"If you want her back alive, you're gonna have to find me pretty fast, Soul Eater!"
And she leaped off into the night, leaving him with only one more warning: "The clock is ticking! And Maka's not the only friend of yours I'll go after!"
