Setting: an AU where the Kishin does not exist and/or has not been freed (haven't decided that yet). The witches are trying to take over but are constantly being stopped by the students at the Death Weapons Meister Academy. Arachne has just been killed by Soul and Maka, her soul was fed to Soul and he's now a Death Scythe. Maka has a soul perception ability that can see through witches soul protect. This makes her a big target.

Chapter 4

~ {Soul} ~

This is just GREAT! Why is Wes here? He was screaming angrily on the inside.

However, on the outside, Soul was calm, and cool, acting as though Wes' appearance was no big deal.

"So Wes, why are you here?" he asked putting in a ton of effort to sound as nonchalant as possible.

Which, in the end, was a wasted effort; his tone was too harsh, and his body language implied that he didn't want to be around him.

"Well, Mom and Dad were busy, and it felt like I hadn't seen you in ages so I decided to come and see how you were doing," he paused for a second, "so, how ARE you doing?"

"Great, those two idiots you saw fighting earlier are my best friends and a part of my team-" he was cut off.

"What about the girl?"

"Huh? Maka? She's my partner..." he turned to look at his brother trying to understand why he had asked about her, "Why?"

"Is she-"

"Soul!" Maka shouted running back to him, "The party's starting! Now we can…" she noticed Wes standing next to him, "Oh! I'm sorry I didn't realize I was interrupting something!"

Wes chuckled, "It's alright. So you're Maka, huh?"

"Yes I am."

"Well it's a pleasure to meet you. I heard you made my little brother into a Death Scythe… Is that true?"

"Yeah, I did."

"Is that hard to do? A few people that I spoke to made it sound like a big deal…"

"It is hard to do! Well, the 99 souls aren't that hard but it's that one witch soul that creates a problem. Killing a witch is tough."

"Wow!" Wes smiled at her, then repositioned so that he could look at both of them, "Congratulations to both of you for accomplishing something so difficult!" He turned back to Maka, "Especially to you," he grabbed her hand, pulled it up and placed a kiss on it.

Soul couldn't take it anymore. He turned and left, trying to put as much distance as possible between him and Wes.

"Soul, wait!" Maka yelled before chasing after him.

She caught up quickly, "Soul why'd you leave so suddenly?"

Soul growled, "He was pissing me off,"

"Soul," She asked her tone softer, her hand grabbed his, "he's your brother. I think you should face him and try to get over this rift."

"No, I'm not doing that,"

"Idiot! You can't go hating your family for the rest of your life!" their voices began to get louder.

"Why not? You hate your Dad!"

"I don't hate him all the time, only when he's flirting with women, or trying to act like nothing's happened between him and mother!"

"How about you fix your problems with your family and THEN you can try to lecture me into fixing mine!"

"Soul!" She yelled angrily, "I'm trying to help you!"

"I don't need your help! Leave me alone!" He yelled back.

She huffed, roughly let go of his hand, violently kicked him in the shin before turning and stomping off in her father's direction.

He watched her go.


~ {Blair} ~

Blair was lonely. Maka and Soul had left to go to a party that she had not been invited to. So she, in her moment of weakness, decided to try to rid her feelings of loneliness by shopping.

She was walking down town; she had been searching for a particular shop for about an hour. A shop called The Lioness. It was a new shop in town that had been all her cat friends would talk about during the last few days, and during that time she'd been too busy to check it out… until now.

There it is! Finally! She thought, changing course. I didn't think it would take me THAT long to find this place!

She walked into the store, and saw a sight that surprised her. The walls were stained, the floors were filthy, and there wasn't a shelf in sight.

This place was a dump.

"Wh-what?" Blair asked the darkness.

Am I in the right place? This cannot be it!

"Are you Blair?" a voice called out.

"Y-yes… Who's there?"

A woman emerged from the back of the so called 'store'. She approached Blair, her stride smooth, and confident. She stopped when she was just a few steps away from the young magical cat. Her dark green eyes seemed to glow in the dim light.

"Hello Blair. I require your assistance."

Blair's eyes seemed to glaze over as she asked, "What do you want me to do?"


~ {Wes} ~

Wes watched the fight between his brother and Maka, watching still as they parted.

His brother obviously hadn't been too happy to see him today, after seeing Soul's reaction he'd thought that maybe it would be better if he hadn't come at all.

Focus Wes! Remember the reason you came here. As he remembered his resolve hardened, he was going to do this.

Wes walked over to his brother and asked, "What happened between you and Maka?"

Soul sighed, "She was butting in, I told her to butt out and she got angry. End of story."

There was a moment of silence. Wes struggled with what he was going to say, he'd rehearsed it over and over but now…

All of those words had suddenly vanished from his mind.

Wes gritted his teeth. Just tell him, what you feel and what we felt about Soul's coming here…

The words flowed into his mind and suddenly he knew exactly what he needed to say.

It was definitely better than before.

"Soul, I came here to apologize." Soul looked up at him in shock, "Mom and Dad wanted to come and apologize themselves, but I insisted to them that I should go alone. I told them that you would be less willing to listen to us if they were around. I'm sorry that we as a family didn't support you as much as we should have."

"Dammit Wes! What are you trying to pull?" Soul asked angrily.

"I'm not trying to pull anything! Look Soul! After you left and never contacted us we realized that you hadn't just left us. You had deserted us. You didn't want anything to do with us. That hurt, hurt pretty bad. We wondered what could have possibly caused this and we realized that you were treated like 2nd best."

"You were always so wrapped up in your music that you barely took any time to recognize mine." Soul inserted, tone devoid of emotion. "Mom and Dad were always encouraging you to keep going… I just wanted to be encouraged like you. So I took up piano and got really good at it. I was always waiting for them to tell me how proud of me they were and how I needed to keep practicing but…" Soul trailed off

"It just got to the point where they didn't feel like starting the whole process over again. Basically, repeating themselves. They never said anything like that to you, and you thought it was because you weren't good enough for them." Wes paused, "Right?"

"Y-yeah."

"That wasn't true. They never realized they treated us different, and once they did they were horribly sorry. They tried sending you letters but you'd send them back, we tried calling but you never answered. We had just wanted… Just wanted…" Wes paused. He wasn't exactly sure what they'd wanted. It wasn't that they wanted Soul's forgiveness. No, it was something else…

Suddenly it hit him. He knew exactly what they had wanted, "We just wanted you to know that we were sorry." Wes waited for Soul to say something, anything, but he said nothing at all. "We don't expect forgiveness right away. We just wanted you to know so that maybe someday, we could be forgiven and then we could try to fix things between us." He waited again, but Soul, again, said nothing. "I'll go now."

Wes walked far away before looking back at his brother, who was like a stone.

He hadn't moved an inch.


Alright!

This story's about to officially LAUNCH into action mode!

Mwahahahahaha!

I've been dying to reach this part! Now I need to perfect the art of writing fighting scenes!

Review please.