As soon as the end of the day bell rang, Ash jumped out of her seat. Before she could get to the door though, Patty took a hold of her arm and dragged her back to walk with everyone else.
"Why are you in such a rush?" Maka asked.
"I just am..." Ash reluctantly stood between Patty and Kid, much to his dismay because of the lack of symmetry.
"Do Europeans always drive on the wrong side of the road?" Patty decided to try getting Ash to talk, though her question caught her completely off guard.
"What?"
"Do Europeans always drive on the wrong side of the road?" She repeated as Ash took a moment to decide whether she should be sarcastic or defensive.
"Please elaborate."
"They drive on the left, right?" With a sigh, Ash tried to figure out how to explain it.
"While I've never heard of only one side of a road being used, since that would likely cause many crashes, I can say that some countries have roads where the system is the reverse of how they are here."
"Why do you not have an accent?"
"I'm American," Ash then switched to a British accent to say "but I can use many other accents." Then she said with a Russian accent, "but also, American is an accent. There's no way to speak without one." Patty giggled.
"What other accents can you do?" With a sigh, Ash began to say various things in varying accents, each one causing the merry blonde to smile and laugh as if it were a comedy.
"I guess you have to ask the right questions to get her to talk." Maka said to Soul.
"I just hope she's not one of those people who doesn't stop talking once she starts..."
"Heh, you never know. She seems a bit sarcastic too."
By the time the group arrived at the park, Patty had gotten Ash to speak in 23 different accents, 20 different languages, sing three national anthems, admit to being anti-social, have a book quoting contest with Maka, and manage to get Kid to stop complaining about the asymmetrical formation of the group.
Patty rushed over to the swing set with Liz following close behind because she knew that her little sister would want her to push her on the swing. Ash sat still on the second swing, Soul and Kid sat on the bench, and Crona stood off to the side with Maka.
"Her soul is weird, I don't know how to deal with that sort of thing..." Crona whispered, glancing at Ash. Maka tried looking at her soul, but thought it looked completely normal. In fact, it looked like a normal human human soul, which was strange for a weapon, especially one so special.
"It looks normal to me, albeit strangely normal." Crona's eyes widened at this.
"B-but you can barely see it! And looks like half of it isn't even there..." Just to double check, Maka looked again, but it still looked the same.
"That's awfully strange... Why don't we ask her about it?" She took a step before Crona stopped her.
"What if she's a witch or something?"
"Let's ask Kid what he thinks first then, and then we can ask her, okay?"
"I-if you say so..."
When they approached Kid, he looked up curiously at their unusual expressions. They asked him to look at Ash's soul, and he recalled what he saw earlier.
"In that case, I did see the same thing as you, Crona. I'm not sure what it is, but I was planning on asking my father about it."
"That sounds pretty messed up though. How come Maka saw one thing and you guys saw something else. Does that happen often?" Soul asked. Maka started walking over to Ash.
"Not as far as I know. Hey Ash?"
The quiet girl looked up from the notebook she was sketching in.
"Hm?"
"Would you happen to know why your soul looks so strange. It looks strangely normal to me, but Crona and Kid say that it's abnormal and half of it is missing."
Ash seemed to freeze, staring at the straightforward girl standing about 3 feet away. The whole group felt the same weird, dreadful feeling as when they first met her, only it was stronger. There was something in her bright eyes that spelled death as she gazed in thought. Maka felt the need to look away, walk away, and just crawl into a hole and die, but that just motivated her more to stay.
Ash's gaze flickered over to Kid as she opened her mouth to reply.