BlackStar, god of Children

After lecture, Stein turned off the brand-new overhead projector that Kid had maintenance men install over the weekend. "I must say, I like these new upgrades to DWMA infrastructure," he mentioned. "Alright, so I ended lecture a few minutes early to hand out the graded tests. I must say that I'm particularly proud of one student who, against all odds, aced this test with a perfect score."

Against all odds? Soul thought. Maka doesn't fight against odds.

"BlackStar, would you please stand up?" Stein said, clapping.

BlackStar stood up, took a deep breath as if to yell, but then cleared his throat, and said, "Thank you." He sat down. Stein then passed back the papers. Afterwards, Maka complained, "How'd he get a perfect score? That last question was impossible!"

Soul shrugged.

"I'm usually the top in the class," she complained.

"Get a grip, don't flip your shit," he rhymed.

She sighed. "You're right. It's just one test."

The next day, Stein called upon BlackStar to answer a question on the black board, in front of the whole class. He did so with ease, and explained it with even more ease and fluency. Maka frowned. Soul teased, "Jealousy will make you old and wrinkled." Maka frowned at him. He added, "So do frowns."

During gym class, they were practicing battle skills. BlackStar grabbed and flipped Sid over. Sid nodded. "Great job BlackStar."

Maka frowned. Nygus called Maka up. Maka tried to flip Nygus, but couldn't and was herself pinned down.

The next day, in dissection lab, Maka was gently scraping away at the membranes of the intestines of an ugly dead baby pig. "I've never seen such a nicely done dissection by a student," exclaimed Stein. Maka looked up to see that he was bragging on BlackStar.

She frowned. How could an idiot become a star pupil in a matter of weeks?

Maybe BlackStar really was a god.

She shook her head. Nah.

Later that day, Maka and Soul were given a mission. The way Stein explained it, "Someone's heading on the verge of becoming a corrupted soul. They fed off of the terror of people in a town by killing one child each night. Please stop the person who is committing this atrocity."

Because the mission seemed dangerous, BlackStar and Tsubaki were also part of their team. So they were in Ukraine, sitting on top of a hill on the outskirts of a tiny village, waiting in the middle of the night for the killer. Maka scanned the horizon for weird souls. Tsubaki kept drifting so sleep, so BlackStar had to keep pinching her. He kept pinching her on her upper thigh. Soul knew he could never get away with doing that to Maka. Soul, wearing his headphones and listening to music, watched as BlackStar monitored Tsubaki's alertness.

"Tsubaki stay awake," Blackstar told her.

"Yeah, yeah," she said.

He pinched her.

"I'm awake BlackStar," she mumbled.

He rebuked her, "You can stay up until three or four am when you're watching your BBC on your laptop."

"What the f*ck?" Soul exclaimed.

Maka turned around, confused and tired.

Tsubaki snapped awake and quickly said, "You don't know about the British Broadcasting Channel?"

Soul blushed. He felt so uncool. "Oh. My bad. I guess I'm on Tumblr too much. Thought of something else…Haha…"

BlackStar asked, "Didn't I tell your ass to lay off Tumblr for a while?"

Soul ignored him. Maka asked, "Do you watch Sherlock?"

Tsubaki nodded.

"I do too," Maka said as she yawned. "We should hang out and talk about it sometime."

Good thing Tsubaki actually watched Sherlock. After that Tsubaki felt more awake. At least, until she felt BlackStar pinch her again. She complained, "When is this guy gonna attack? He needs to hurry up."

BlackStar asked, "Is Maka awake still?"

Soul, who was the most alert out of all of them (he was the king of pulling all-nighters), tapped Maka on the shoulder. She shuddered awake. "Yeah?" she said as she wiped the slight drool from her face. Soul thought that was cute. BlackStar threatened, "I'm going to pinch you if you fall asleep again."

Maka threatened, "If you do, I'm killing you."

BlackStar laughed. "YOU CAN'T KILL ME! I'M IMMORTAL!"

"Is that so?" asked an unfamiliar voice. It was a calm, quiet voice—that of a little girl's. It came from behind them. They all turned around to see a pale little girl, with very deep red lips, very dark eyes, and very blonde hair, wearing a white dress and red sandals, and holding a blood red colored teddy bear.

"Holy f*cking shit," Soul swore as he jumped away from her and became a scythe, landing in Maka's hands.

"Calm down Soul," Maka said as she bopped him on his handle. "And stop using that kind of language around a little girl."

The little girl giggled. "I'm not just a little girl," she said.

"What do you mean?" Maka asked.

Before she knew it, a lock of the little girl's hair suddenly extended and grabbed Maka's ankle. It lifted her up into the air. Maka screamed and tried to cut the hair and free herself. However, her hair felt as hard as steel.

"What?!" Maka exclaimed.

BlackStar quickly jumped into action, running toward the little girl and thrusting the palm of his hand into her gut, and using his soul wavelength to attack her. She disappeared with a poof! Leaving nothing but a smoke cloud in her wake.

"Tsubaki!" BlackStar called out.

She nodded and became her demon sword mode. BlackStar wielded her and began trying to sense for the little girl. Meanwhile, Maka fell to the ground with a thud! She sat up and griped, "That's not a little girl."

"No shit Sherlock," Soul insulted.

"I'm tired alright! I'm not thinking," Maka said.

She scanned the area to look for the apparition's soul. Maka pointed down at a house. "There she is! Hurry!"

They all ran toward a house and burst in through the roof. There, they found the creepy little girl using her teddy bear to smother a toddler while the toddler slept. She turned to Maka and BlackStar and smiled. "I like to play with the dead children."

Maka swung her scythe partner at the girl, but the hair turned into steel and made her rebound, accidentally slamming Soul through a wall, into another room.

"Maka! Wake up!" Soul shouted.

Of course, all this noise woke the residents of the house. A man burst into the room with a shotgun.

"What's going on!" he cried out.

He saw two kids with weapons, a little girl with a teddy bear, and his toddler. He pointed the shotgun at Maka and Soul, because, I mean, they had just wrecked his wall. The little girl laughed and disappeared in a cloud of smoke. The guy freaked out. "Who are you?" he screamed.

Maka and BlackStar looked at each other. They both jumped out of the roof. The toddler woke up and started crying.

"That was embarrasing," Maka said.

BlackStar complained, "I wish you could hit the little demon."

"I can't cut her hair!"

As if on cue, a lock of hair grabbed both BlackStar's and Maka's ankles and slammed them into the ground repeatedly. They heard the laughter of the little girl. Maka managed to avoid being slammed facedown into the ground again by sticking Soul's handle in the ground and using him as a lever to swing herself out of the grasp of the lock of hair.

Meanwhile BlackStar forced his soul wavelength into sword-mode Tsubaki, cut himself free, and ran toward the girl, stabbing her in the chest.

"Okay Maka, how tired are you?" Soul asked.

Maka ignored him and paid attention to the girl. She started screaming. BlackStar jumped back, and prepared for her next attack. But she just kept screaming, "No! No! Don't kill me! Don't kill me!"

BlackStar looked at Maka. "What's going on!?" he asked.

Maka shook her head. "I don't know!"

The little girl poofed into clouds of smoke again. By now, villagers began looking out of their windows. Tsubaki said, "Looks like we're creating a scene."

The little girl reappeared again. She held out her blood red teddy bear. "Mr. Tickles used to be brown," she said.

BlackStar and Maka hesitated.

BlackStar mumbled, "Does she mean…"

Maka gasped and dropped to her knees. She stared at the little girl with shock.

"Mr. Tickles used to be brown," the girl repeated.

"Oh my goodness. She's already dead," Maka mumbled. "It's the teddy bear that has the soul!"

The girl cuddled the teddy bear. "Mr. Tickles? Can I have more friends to play with?"

BlackStar ran up to the little girl and snatched her teddy bear. She poofed again.

This time, however, Mr. Tickles frowned. Suddenly animated, he grabbed onto BlackStar's face and stared to smother him. Maka swung Soul and cut Mr. Tickles in half. The stuffed animal fell off of BlackStar's face.

"Maka! Shit! My face!" he called out, grabbing his face.

"I didn't hit you, you little crybaby," she yelled.

BlackStar released his face. He was okay. He turned to Maka. "Punk," he insulted.

Maka argued, "I just saved you!"

Mr. Tickles writhed in pain. The little girl reappeared and screamed. It was an ear shattering scream. They all dropped to their knees and covered their ears.

The girl then began to sob. "Mr. Tickles was always with me! Even when I died! He was always with me. Always by my side until the bitter end. Soaking up my blood."

Then the girl poofed away, for good, finally. A soul was left behind where Mr. Tickles lay. Tsubaki and Soul reverted to human form. Soul looked at Tsubaki. "You gonna eat that?"

Tsubaki shook her head. Soul grabbed the soul. He just held onto it. He didn't want to eat this one.

BlackStar asked, "What just happened?"

Maka replied, "That bear was possessed by the soul of the dead girl, who was killing children so that she could have playmates and wouldn't feel so lonely being dead."

BlackStar, Tsubaki and Soul's faces dropped. Maka sighed and wiped a tear forming in her eyes. The people in the village slowly retreated to their houses. BlackStar picked up Mr. Tickles. He hugged the bear.

The next day, after a good rest, the BlackStar and Tsubaki visited the grave of the little girl. Turns out that she was murdered, along with the rest of her family, during a violent armed robbery. They hadn't buried her with her favorite teddy bear. BlackStar took the liberty of sowing up the damaged teddy bear himself so that he could return it. He remembered talking to Kid the other day and hearing about how Patty went out of her way (and got shot) to retrieve a lost teddy bear. BlackStar assumed that the little stuffed animals had a deeper meaning to children than anyone realized.

BlackStar knelt down by the grave, paid his respects, and left Mr. Tickles on top of her grave. "Hopefully she won't be lonely anymore," he muttered.

After Tsubaki paid her respects, she knelt down beside him. "You okay?"

He nodded. "I just hate to see little kids die, you know?" He clenched his fists. "When I surpass god, I'm gonna be the god of protecting little kids."

Tsubaki nodded, happily. "You'd make a great god of kids."

"Her name was Ella."

"The girl?"

"Yeah."

Tsubaki watched as BlackStar's eyes expressed his deep sadness. Then he opened his mouth and ruined it by saying, "I hope Mrs. Fey's daughter is eating her veggies."

Tsubaki just went with it. "I hope she is too."