"Spiky!" Angel Leon shouted to her foster father. "Hurry up already!"
"I'm coming, I'm coming," an increasingly irate Black Star replied to the 11-year-old. The long road trip was frustrating enough; having to wear that monkey suit for a simple dinner just made it more annoying. "I don't get the rush—the big game doesn't start for another two hours, dinner's not till 4, and the rest of the gang ain't arrived yet."
"But I want to see the baby!"
"Angela," Tsubaki replied, "she's probably asleep. And you should be a little quieter, or else you'll wake her." She steadied herself, getting out of the mini-van. She struggled to look away from that eyesore of a vehicle—"the Star-mobile" he insisted upon calling it, having re-painted the entire thing into a blue and silver monstrosity—and she gazed up at the Northampton house ahead of them, sheltered by a number of large trees, colored in a variety of warm hues. "You might wake up your sibling at this rate," she teased, patting her slightly larger abdomen.
"Then can I play in the leaves for a bit?"
"Sure thing, tiny!" Black Star replied, messing up her hair. "I'd start with the ones Soul already raked—that'll piss him off good!"
"Yahoo!" Angela said, as she dashed back to the van. "Let me get my broom!"
"Angela Leon!" Tsubaki warned. "I told you not to bring that with you! We are not making a mess this year!"
"Ah, let her have her fun, Tsubaki," Black Star said, patting her back. "What's a Thanksgiving without a little mess?"
She glared at him.
"I should probably tell you I told Angela to bring the broom, shouldn't I?"
Tsubaki nodded.
" 'Cause I wanted to make this year's tag football fun more epic?"
Tsubaki shook her head no.
"When we get back to Death City, I'm so in the doghouse, aren't I?"
"On the couch, at least," she replied, with a smirk, holding his face in her hands, as she kissed him.
"Enough with the coupling stuff, you two!" a shout came out from the house's doorway. Maka Albarn, now 23, came down the porch stairs, and wrapped her arms around both her friends. "How was the drive?" she said, squeezing more tightly.
"Exhausting," Tsubaki replied. "Road trips from Nevada to Massachusetts are murder, even if you know a teacher who can add some speedy magic tools to your minivan."
"Maka," Black Star asked, "could you squeeze a bit less? I don't want your face paint on my good duds, okay?"
That made the woman only squeeze harder. "You are such a bad fan—can't even cover yourself in a good coat of paint." She released. "Head on in—Soul's introducing the kid to the Thanksgiving Day parade, trying to get her to stop crying."
"Ha! I'll make that brat stop crying for you, no problem at all, Maka!" Black Star bounced off the ground, and landed on the porch with a loud thud. The cries of an infant got louder.
"God damn it, Black Star! Don't make her cry any more than she has!"
"Then don't yell at her, Soul! Babies smell fear! How else can they handle smelling their own shit that much?!" He glanced back at Maka and Tsubaki. "See? I have been reading those parenting books!"
As Black Star entered the doorway, Tsubaki and Maka sighed.
"He's going to be a terrible parent," Maka said.
"No, that's where you're wrong, Maka," Tsubaki said, testily.
The face-painted three-star meister stared curiously at her friend. "Why's that?"
Her answer came in the form of a flurry of leaves, dropped on the mother and expecting mother's heads. Maka could already see the red, yellow, and orange leaves had a bit of black added to them now from rubbing against her face paint.
"He's already an awful parent," Tsubaki replied with a smile, as Angela flew her broomstick through the open window of the house.
"How's your mother going to tolerate this kind of a Thanksgiving?" Tsubaki asked. "When Kid and the three girls get here, it's going to be a nightmare."
"I gave Mama the warning months ago: she's locked all the bedrooms, removed the good towels from the bathroom, found the only plumber in all of Northampton that works Thanksgiving, set all the clocks to 8 o'clock, and she wrapped plastic tarp around all the walls."
"Isn't that a bit overboard even for us?" Tsubaki asked. "It's just us at your mother's country house this year."
"And Papa."
Tsubaki twisted her head abruptly to glance at Maka. "He isn't."
"Yep: he's bringing his new girlfriend, too."
"Oh." Tsubaki paused. "This…is going to be a long weekend." She smiled. "Good thing I brought a few changes of clothes this year."
"Maka!" a woman shouted from inside the house. "Get your butt in here—I need some help with my face paint!"
Maka smiled, and placed a hand on her friend's shoulder. "It's sad that the baby makes less of a mess than the adults."
Tsubaki shrugged. "Adulthood is overrated, anyway." She walked towards the porch steps, feeling a small kick in her womb.
o-o-o
WRITER'S NOTES: Epilogue
Thanks to the Anonymous poster for submitting what was an honest random question about how the Soul Eater characters would celebrate Thanksgiving—that I then turned into this long rambling. I struggled because someone already wrote a great Thanksgiving Soul Eater fan fic—ChaoticLivi's "Thankful for You"—so I wanted to do something that was not Soul x Maka-focused and instead gave some attention to Tsubaki, who gets so little attention in the manga as is. I really do not think I have a handle on her: she is stuck in the straight-person role against more crazy characters, so I'm trying to improve her portrayal. Then again, I am lacking in how I portray Patty as well: she is wacky, but that is not all there is to the character. My upcoming Kid and Patty story will help in that regard. And hey—I finally got to write Liz in a story!
I hope I didn't make people think that Tsubaki had some more dreadful plan in mind when she was ruminating how Black Star, Soul, and the rest would react to her plan. Seeing as this story ends with her pregnant—albeit in a time skip—I could see this story taking on a more mature tone.
I hint that Maka and Soul are going to get split up following that hint in Chapter 113, as she worries about him being far away from him. And I already know I would have the food fight end with Soul creaming Maka—which was too awful to have him do if he was going to be separating from her to take over Justin Law and Tsar Pushka's jobs in Europe and Russia. As you can see by this story's ending, that separation does not stick—as if it would ever happen, and as if I would have Soul do something that awful to Maka unless their partnership was going to continue. Please be patient with me—there are more stories to tell about the partnership of the Angelic Meister and the Last Death Scythe, and how they end up creating a family.
I avoided naming the spawn of Soul and Maka. There are so many other OC children with great names, and I wrote this so quickly I wasn't going to wait to ask someone whether I could borrow that name, or to think up one on my own. Angela Leon already took what would have been a great name for Maka's child—although, "Angel" could be a good gender-neutral one. If she named her child "Crona," I'm pretty sure I would have to crawl under my bed and cry for a while.
Despite appearances to the contrary in this story (including Black Star and Tsubaki's expecting child), I'm not sold on TsuStar—not yet. I got something in mind for that pairing. And for Angela Leon's role in this family. (Christmas fan fic coming soon. After the moon battle, Black Star totally spoils his daughter.)
Hey, I included Maka's mother in the story—and like Ohkubo, I never show her! Yay for hypocrisy!
Why Northampton? I have a soft spot for Massachusettes, and I'm a Ninja Turtles fan.
"Kid and the three others." Liz, Patty…So, who's the third girl? And who is Spirit's new girlfriend? Stay tuned for future fan fics—'cause I'm done with this one.
As a last-minute edit, I'm not happy with the aging I planned for Angela and Maka: in this time frame, it's been about seven years since Chapter 113, so Angela went from around 4 to around 11, and Maka from around 15 to 23. This likely will change in planning: 23 certainly is an age when Maka may have a child, but I initially thought she would be a few years older than that—the earlier draft was 29 years old. Seeing as the kids had to grow up faster thanks to war, but also wanting to avoid having her have a child as young as her parents did, I'm not sure that is the age I would imagine when she and Soul start a family.
Thank you for reading.