"So how long have you been pretending to be Stein, Calix?"

Stein- Calix- smiled a sickening, toothy grin. He shifted into a back stance, most of his weight in his back leg, and held the long sword easily above his head, the tip aimed at the center of Lexi's forehead.

"Since his death," Calix said, nodding his head towards Spirit, who glared and clenched his shaking fists. His voice had changed, and sounded nothing like Stein's any more. He was careful with diction, each syllable annunciated perfectly. But there was something under the uncomfortable perfection with which he spoke: a quiet growl.

Kid particularly noted the glint in Calix's eye as he looked over Lexi like an animal about to catch his prey.

"So," Calix continued, all of his attention now focused on Lexi. "Are you ready to end this once and for all?"

Reaching into the side of her boot, Lexi pulled out her silver dagger, flipping it once and catching it, then pointing it at him offensively. Kid could see that every muscle in her body was tensed, coiled and ready to strike like a deadly rattlesnake.

"I've been ready since the day you began it," she replied, a snarl in her throat.

And with a yell, the two opponents rushed at each other.


Maka ran through the streets, barely able to keep up with the fight. Lexi had led Calix out of the house as quickly as she could, and Maka could tell that she had made a good move; their fight was destructive. They slammed each other into buildings, knocked over lamp posts, smashed windows, and other countless ways of wrecking things. Their weapons were morphing the whole time, silver arrows and gold bullets and silver blades and gold maces and silver scythes and gold chains and more weapons that Maka had never even seen before. They moved through the streets of Death City, locked in vicious combat.

"MAKA!" she heard someone shout behind her, and when she pulled her attention from the fight, Kid was supporting her father as they hobbled over to her.

"We need your help," Spirit said, panting. "Calix planted bombs in the city. We need to get rid of them before they detonate. We already found three; they were all set for the same time. We have roughly ten minutes to get rid of all of them."

"In the entire city?" she responded, bewildered. There was no way they could collect all of the bombs and be certain they had gotten them all…

"They'll be around the perimeter and in the main streets leading up to the school," Kid said. "That's roughly the pattern we found the three in. Let's get going. Recruit people you see."

Maka nodded and started to head off up the street, but before she could take more than two steps, Kid grabbed her wrist.

"Take Spirit," he instructed, draping Spirit's arm over Maka's shoulder. She took her father's weight on her shoulders, looking at Kid quizzically.

"What are you gonna do?" she asked him, glancing back at Death Manor as Liz and Patty came jogging out and up to them. There was a loud crash from somewhere else in the city and they all looked up towards it, seeing flashes of gold and silver over there.

"I'm going to help Lexi," he replied. "Now go! Hurry, we don't have much time left!"

Without a glance back at her, Kid turned and began running towards the sounds of fighting, Liz and Patty transforming and appearing in his hands in flashes of pink light. Maka turned and, supporting her father, walked up the street to find the bombs.


She was driving him out of the city. Out of the city and away from the people, who would end up dead if they got in the way of the fight. Lexi had purposely taken the defensive position in the battle, knowing that it would be easier to lead Calix out of the city than it would be to push him out of it.

"So," he said casually as their blades met, as if they were sparring informally instead of battling to the death. "Are you going to chicken out like you did last time and go for a leg shot?"

"Don't waste your breaths," she responded, glaring as she shoved him away, immediately countering another blow aimed at her head. "You don't have many left."

"Big words coming from someone who's been running for… how long is it now?" he kicked her in the stomach, knocking her back. She managed to slide back, staying on her feet, and ducking another kick, feeling it swipe above her head.

"Five years," she replied, leaning back on her elbows and kicking both feet at him. Her kick met his knees and they buckled, but he used the fall to land on his hands and swing his legs around at her. But she was already up, digging her blade into his shoulder. He howled in pain and snarled, shifting his sword into a war hammer and knocking her aside with a blow to the arm. Pain exploded in her arm, and she knew it was probably sprained. Great. One arm down.

"Since you're going to lose this fight, I'll let you in on a little secret," he said, cradling the wound to his shoulder with a bloody hand. "You're the youngest Soul Master I've ever hunted. Eleven is a young age to start. The youngest before you was nineteen when I started hunting them."

"Why so early?" Lexi flipped the dagger again, anger boiling inside her. He was toying with her, but it was working. She was getting mad.

"I didn't want to wait so long," he responded, the hammer changing into a pistol. With his good arm, he aimed it at her forehead and shot. In an instant, her dagger changed into a shield and she managed to block the bullet.

"You got bored?" she blocked another three bullets, the anger inside her threatening to burst out. "I was a child!"

"All the better." He smirked. His pistol changed into a spear and he charged at her, but skidded to a stop when he heard shots behind him. Turning, he saw Kid soaring down to them over the buildings, pistols out and firing at him. He turned back to Lexi, who was smirking as her own shield changed into a pistol as well.

"Here comes the cavalry," she said, aiming at Calix. He snarled, lunging at her, narrowly avoiding two bullets from her. His hands encircled her throat and she fell back on the ground, trying to roll him off of her. She could feel her lungs starving for oxygen as his hands got tighter and tighter.

"GET OFF OF HER!" Kid shouted from above them, and more gunshots rang out. But Calix's hands didn't loosen, even as Lexi felt the jolts from Kid's soul bullets hit him. He was stronger than even a meister, and his grip kept tightening. Lexi's air was cut off completely. A normal human would have been dead by then.

Suddenly his grip faltered. Lexi gasped and coughed, taking in as much air as she could get all at once. As she got on her hands and knees to steady herself, she saw that Kid had tackled Calix and was sitting over him, punching him over and over in the face. But Calix's hands met Kid's chest and he was shoved 10 feet back into a wall. Calix had barely taken a scratch. He stood up, cracking his neck, and gestured for Lexi to get to her feet. She stood, cracking her knuckles, the look in her eyes deadly, but he just laughed.

"You're too late, you know that, right?" he said with a deep laugh. "Everyone in this city's already damned. It's just a matter of time."

In that instant, dread spread through Lexi's body like ice water. They were already damned? What had he done? Her thoughts whirled as she thought about how to clear out the city as quickly as possible when a loud boom echoed down to them from up near the forest.

"You planted bombs," she whispered, staring at the smoke cloud as it rose to meet the sky. Her fists clenched and she looked down, hands shaking.

This couldn't go on anymore. If she died, he would disappear too, that's how it was supposed to go. He wouldn't kill anyone because of her anymore. She'd finally be free.

"Fine," she said, looking up to meet his eyes. "You win."

Kid's eyes widened as he staggered to his feet. "Lexi, what are you doing?"

"Shut up, Kid!" she snapped at him. "Just give me this one thing. Give me this one last time to try and fix what I've broken."

"You haven't broken anything!" he shot back. "This isn't your fault!"

"I'm sorry, Kid," she said, and when he looked in her eyes, he saw sincerity… and pain. In that moment, he realized that Lexi didn't blame Calix for what he had done to her. She blamed herself. She took a deep breath and turned back to Calix, her weapon changing back to the original silver dagger.

"You kill me, I kill you. This ends now."

Calix nodded, his face becoming more serious.

"I'll respect your last wishes, Soul Master." His weapon morphed back into a sword and he pointed it at her stomach. Lexi raised her dagger and aimed to stab down at his heart.

"On three," she said. Every ounce of fight had gone out of her, and she just sounded tired. The tip of his blade pressed against her stomach, the tip of hers against his heart.

"One. Tw-"

Calix thrust his blade forward.


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