A/N: *coughs up blood* I'M NOT DEAD.

Sometimes, uh, life... doesn't find a way. I apologize for the wait for the update. I hope this makes up for it!

She hated admitting it, but she was scared. Even with Law with her. The last time they'd been here, their night had turned into a parody of a slasher fic. She almost admired how cool and collected he managed to look. "What do you think this is going to-" She paused, seeing her temp-meister was crouched down digging in the backpack he'd brought with him. "Forget something?"

"Nope." He didn't look up at her.

Before she could ask what he was looking for, the door to the patchwork lab swung open and there stood the man she'd been equal parts dreading and looking forward to seeing. "Professor Stein." She bowed her head a little… of course, the idiot beside her didn't even give a greeting.

"Aha!" And then he was hopping up and reeling his arm back and- oh dammit, he better not be-

She watched, horrified, as the boy with the stupid hair beside him launched a roll of tissue paper at the doctor's home. Her head whipped back and forth between the all-too proud of himself moron and their teacher who was lighting a cigarette. "Interesting." The doctor said, though his tone made it sound like he thought it was anything but to him.

"Hey, Pigtails." She'd just been about to give the idiot an earful when he offered her something. Her very own roll of toilet paper. How considerate. "What's that look for?" He asked. "S'not like they can punish us for the same thing twice."

Her brain hurt.

How was it possible to be this stupid? Did he have an allergy to thinking his actions through?

"No? Okay." With a shrug, he launched the other roll… though this one he'd aimed not at the house, but their teacher leaving him with a strip of tissue paper that went right down the middle. A small hole was burned in part of it from the man's lit cigarette.

He was going to be the death of her, wasn't he?

After a whole lot of apologizing and chopping, they stood within what she assumed was the man's office. The lights flickered, there were as many unwashed test tubes as there were ones in use, and there was a computer with an image on the screen she couldn't identify beyond that there was a lot of red that she assumed was blood. Why, just why, did the moron she was with have to antagonize a man that would probably gladly perform a vivisection on them?

"Maka, go ahead and transform." Stein didn't sound mad, but it wasn't as though the man was an easy read.

"Y-Yes sir." She cursed her stutter and shifted. She always worried that she was just going to drop to the floor when she did. Well, if she being most honest, she was concerned her meister either couldn't or wouldn't catch her as she twirled in the air. That she'd just cracked her current partner's head open a little while ago made those concerns just a bit more valid.

Law didn't let that happen though, twirling her around his hand for a few moments before snapping hold of her like he was prepared to go reaping souls with his little scythe in hand.

It made up for earlier. A little.

"Hm." She could feel Stein's gaze on her and sank deeper into her soul, not exactly thrilled to be stared at so intently by him once again. "Your resonance seems more stable than before. Shallow, but stable." Shallow? As much as that word irked her to hear, she hadn't pushed it the same way she had that day in the dance studio. There was a little twist in her stomach every time her soul and Law's hooked into each other as she could feel how unsure he was about her and how little he trusted her not to take things too far again.

"Yeah, no oven-mitt required." Law made a good show of not being all that enthused about it, but there was a trickle of joy that came through their connection that said otherwise. He was pretty roundabout with his feelings, wasn't he? Cute.

Stein stepped over and held his hand out. "Let me hold her for a moment."

Uhm, what? He wanted to- No. Nope. Not happening. She hurled herself into her connection with Law, hoping he'd see just how great her desire not to resonate with the creepy doctor was-

"Sure, here you go."

Law sucked.

The second those cold fingers replaced her partner's warm ones, she was fighting the urge to shiver. She felt his wavelength pour into her and her first reaction was to jerk away, not wanting to find out just what was in the man's soul or to experience the painful rejection of their souls not being suited for each other. The idea that they could actually resonate was somehow even worse. Still, there wasn't really all that far for her to run as a weapon and contact was made between them, with much reluctance on her part.

What she found was anticlimactic. This meister, supposedly her father's first, had a wavelength she could most easily compare to being offered a glass of water. It didn't taste bad, but it wasn't one she found herself ever thinking she'd prefer over something, or in this case someone, else. It did its part, meshing with her soul and establishing a remarkably solid, if boring, connection. Though, there was something odd about it. With Hero, and to a lesser degree Law, she could pick up on her meisters emotions. Even guess at their thoughts. With Stein though, there was just… silence. She couldn't stop herself from shivering this time when she guessed at what that meant.

Stein must not have had feelings.

"You're much lighter than your father." His words, carrying no inflection of any kind, seemed to prove that. "Hm." She watched him turn his attention to the small boy standing in front of them, hands on his hips, trying to look much tougher than he actually did with those ridiculous faux-ears and stupidly baby-face. Then, Stein tried to decapitate Law with her.

"No-!" She pushed back, hard, and found that fighting against the grown man's soul to be impossible. There just wasn't anything to fight against. It was like her anger was just dissolving into him. Still, she knew enough to bend herself away from the strike, doing all she could to force her weapon form to stay away from the delinquent's neck.

Thankfully, the madman stopped before he murdered one of his students.

"Using you like a proper scythe is impossible. Your handle's short so guarding with you has to be done entirely with the blade. The curve means that thrusting attacks will require some creativity to pull off and wide-swings leaves your meister open as well." The doctor's voice did carry some feeling in it now… but it was just annoyance. "You're totally ill-suited for combat." He flipped her around to offer her back to Law.

Meanwhile, she was sitting on the 'floor' of her soul wondering whether or not Stein had dethroned Soul's partner as her least favorite person in the whole of Death City.

"Dick." Law snatched her away as quickly as he could. "Just because you can't think of a good way to use her doesn't mean there isn't one. Jackie was the same way when she was starting off."

Having someone stand up for her was kind of a new experience. Not a bad one, she decided. Not a bad one at all.

"The Demon Lantern. Your actual partner." The way Stein phrased that ruined whatever nice feeling she was having though.

"Yeah. Plenty of people thought she was clumsy starting off. A detachable, collapsible handle, too weak to really do much with her own flames, and a flat chest." Law listed off. "No one wanted to have any part in that. There are plenty of straightforward weapons for the people who want to have it easy. Now though, she's one of the most sought after weapons in the whole school." She didn't need to hear him say anything, she could feel how proud he was of his partner through their connection. "Never really improved as far as her chest though…" She made a mental note to hit him on the behalf of the other girl once she was back to normal. "So, don't go writing off Maka either. Besides, she might have a growth spurt any day now!"

Did weapons even work like that?

"That's not how it works." Stein answered her question and dashed her hopes all at once.

"Can you prove that can't happen?" Law was stubborn.

"Yes. With mountains of evidence gathered over the course of several hundred years." The doctor really knew how to drive a point home.

"Which means it just hasn't happened yet."

Law was such an idiot. An idiot who made her smile, but an idiot none the less.

Apparently, she wasn't the only one pleased with his words as the doctor smiled as well. He almost seemed like a regular human being for a second there. "I look forward to being proven wrong." It might have even been nice if he didn't look like someone had just offered to buy him a new toy to play with. "Your assignment for this week though will be to figure out a method of fighting that makes the most of Maka. Prove to me she could be in EAT one day."

She could feel Law's grip on her loosening, a sign he wanted her to change back, and she complied. "You don't need to worry, Professor." She touched down beside her partner as her feet reformed. "We'll succeed, won't we?" She spared a look to her side…

Jeez, what was with that look?! He seemed like he had zero confidence in her! After saying all those nice things too! "Won't we…?!" She pressed, glaring a little at her fellow student who gave a reluctant nod.

"Good. Now, if you wouldn't mind." The doctor slipped his hands into his coat's pockets. "Go away."

Maka got the distinct impression that he hadn't had many friends as a child. "Wait-" She stepped forward. "I had a question to ask- Law, do you mind staying-" The last thing she wanted was to be alone with this guy. When she turned to look back at the delinquent, all she saw was the door clicking shut behind him as he left her behind.

"Your meister is very brave." Stein was trying to get a rise out of her. Well, she wouldn't let him.

"He's not my meister." And that didn't bother her at all! Not one bit! Nope!

"I know."

Her eye twitched and she fought the urge to try to hit one of her teachers, even as the man looked at her with that smug expression. "I just wanted to know about you and Papa." She could feel her nails digging into her palms as she spoke. "He never mentioned you. I thought he and Mama were together from the very beginning." She tried very much not to glare at him as she spoke, but she couldn't hide how much his existence bothered her.

"Well, I'm not surprised. Your mother was the one who split us up." The doctor sank into a rolling chair as he spoke.

Something about that made her feel like she'd been punched in the gut. "Split…?" Her Mama had broken up another meister and weapon pair just to get with her Papa? That was…

"A shame to. Your father made for an excellent test subject." Stein continued right on. "Quick recovery time and very weak to anesthesia. Half the dose of most people and he wouldn't wake no matter what I did." He sighed, looking up at the ceiling as though he was thinking back to happier days.

Maka wondered if something was wrong with her that she felt more relieved than frightened hearing the circumstances around his and her father's split. "Mama was doing the right thing then. You two just weren't a good fit."

Stein raised a single, gray eyebrow at her.

"...how long were you two partners?" It couldn't have been that long, considering her Mama and her Papa had never mentioned him.

"Six years."

She almost fell flat on her face. What the hell Mama and Papa. This guy had been a meister to Papa for over a half a decade and they hadn't mentioned it?! She'd always thought her Mama had done it all on her own, made the world's greatest Death Scythe without any kind of help... A thought suddenly occurred to her, one that made her feel nauseous. "I...if it's okay, Professor Stein... how many souls did you collect with Papa?"

The doctor didn't answer immediately. He cocked his head to the side, for once looking as though he was considering what he should say. "...ninety human souls."

Maka was a smart girl. She did the math pretty quickly. "...I'm sorry, Professor Stein... I haven't been fair to you." She raised her head up, the doctor looking a lot blurrier than he had just a moment ago. "It turns out the meister I should have been trying to surpass was you all along, wasn't it?"

The doctor hadn't said anything. He hadn't even tried to stop her when she'd run out. It felt like everything she'd thought about her parents was wrong.

The Mama that she'd thought had existed, the peerless meister who had created her generation's Death Scythe, was a phony. She hadn't surpassed everyone's expectations of her, she'd just taken the baton from someone else after they'd run most of the track and then claimed the trophy all for herself. She'd known her Mama wasn't everything she'd imagined her to be already, but this was just-... it felt worse than finding out she was a weapon. The whole reason she'd even cared about being a meister was because of her!

And Papa, the one her Mama had no problem taking the blame for everything, had been the one who stayed at her side. Had encouraged her when everyone had made fun of her and been against her. Had listened to her when she'd had problems. Had actually stayed with her when even getting out of bed was so hard.

Who was she supposed to look up to? Who was she supposed to be trying to be better then? What exactly was she even trying to do at Shibusen anymore?

The last thing she wanted when she came home was to see her mother had sent her something.

A postcard.

She'd sent a postcard.

It would have been funny if it wasn't such a joke. Still, she'd swallowed her feelings and read it anyway. She hoped for a good apology but would have settled for a bad explanation. She got neither. What she did was a bunch of meaningless fluff that acted as though everything was fine and no one had abandoned their child. By the end of it, she just laughed. Laughed and laughed. She'd headed into her room and dug through her desk until she'd found what she was looking for.

Scissors in hand, she snipped the post card into a thousand little bits of trash instead of just one big one. "No wonder Papa cheated on you..." She didn't even recognize the sound of her own voice, but agreed with it regardless. She looked at the angry, bitter little girl in the mirror. All any of her parents' friends talked about when they saw her was how much she looked like her mother at that age. Reaching up, she undid the clips she'd received as a gift years ago and hurled them as hard as she could at the wall. Her classmates had always teased her that her ash-blonde hair, whether up in pig-tails or spilling down past her shoulders as it was now, was the only thing that let anyone recognize her as a girl.

She looked at the scissors still in her hand.

"...fuck it."