MAN, I am really horrible at updating. I apologize soooo much! Anyway, this is the next chapter, it's not of the best quality and its kind of confusing but I really wanted to get it out there since it took so long for me to update. Hopefully, I'll be able to post the next chapter sometime today so that'll be cool! Hope you guys like this and please tell me what you think! :)

P.S. My headcannon of Maka is she's like an ultra feminist since her dad was a crazy playboy, so you get to see a bit of that in this chapter when Umbridge (as usual) is being a total nutcase. Kay. Have fun with that!

Maka's Tattoo

Maka

The space between them was wide enough to engulf the Arctic Ocean.

. . . .

And it still wasn't wide enough.

"Maka."

Maka kept her gaze forward. In front of her, a pile of kittens squirmed back and forth within a shallow bowl. A pink bow tied across the top drew the kittens' attention. They pressed upon the edges of the plate's boundary, reaching for the bow with sharp clawed paws.

"Maka, please."

She focused her gaze quite seriously on the horrid color splashed across the walls. And dotted all over the floor. And draped across every piece of furniture available. Pink is a very girly color, Maka thought. Nice in moderation, but nauseating in large quantities. Maka imagined that the Professor had used up an entire year's supply to paint her room in the color.

"Maka, please. Look at me."

Her stomach rolled uncomfortably.

"Please."

The kittens were just beginning to realize that they'd never touch the pink bow on the edge of their plate.

"Maka!"

Their mewling cries were pitiful to listen to.

"I'm sorry." Kid dropped his face into his hands. "I'm so sorry."

Maka finally snapped.

"You should be," she said harshly. She didn't turn towards him, but the desk creaked with the tension of her bunching muscles.

"I didn't know what else to do." Kid's voice was muffled through his hands.

"What did you do?" she barked. "I can't feel the –" Her throat closed up with a sharp snap. "The –!" She balled her hands into fists and tried again. "The –!"

"I assume you both know why you are here." Umbridge stepped through the doorway with her pink clipboard tucked beneath her arm. She clicked her heels together and slammed the door behind herself, blocking out the several curious faces peering in through the doorway.

Kid hung his head in shameful recognition.

But Maka refused to bow her head.

"I didn't do anything wrong." Maka crossed her arms over her chest. "He kissed me."

Umbridge gave Maka a sly look, crossing to her desk and sitting lightly upon the edge. "That may be the case." She slid the clipboard onto the top of her desk, folding her hands primly into her lap. "But surely, you must have been asking for it."

Maka's mouth fell open.

"It's only natural, dear." Umbridge tilted her head in an odd smile. Her frog eyes crinkled at the corners, squashed and cold in the middle of her face. "You are an attractive young lady. You must have been doing something to elicit such a reaction from him." She gestured to Kid.

"What?" Maka could barely hear her own voice.

"I mean, look at what you're wearing, dear." She looked scathingly down at Maka's short Spartoi skirt and the long coat trailing behind her. She giggled, high and tight like a little girl. "You should really think more about what people will think of your outfit before you put it on in the morning."

"WHAT?!" Maka stood up from her chair. Kid raised his head in silent outrage, glaring hateful at the old-fashioned teacher. "ARE YOU KIDDING ME!? THIS WASN'T MY FAULT SO DON'T YOU DARE TRY TO PIN THIS ON ME!"

Umbridge's frog eyes grew unsettlingly wide. "Calm down, dear. I'm merely pointing out the obvious."

"DON'T BLAME THE VICTIM! EVEN IF I WAS SHIRTLESS AND WEARING A LACY BLACK BRA THAT DOESN'T MEAN I'M ASKING FOR IT! I'D EXPECTED BETTER FROM SOMEONE OF YOUR GOVERNMENT STANDING!" Maka sat down so hard the desk beneath her rattled. "It's never the victim's fault." Maka tilted her chin up. "So if you brought me in here to give me a lecture on dress code, save your breathe 'cause I won't listen to a word you say."

The tension in the room gave way to a hard, eerie silence. Even the kittens pawing around inside the plates were quiet. They blinked at Maka with wide, porcelain eyes.

"Well," Umbridge said after a moment, standing up abruptly. She brushed her hands down her dress, flicking away some imaginary dust – or the truth in Maka's lecture – before turning towards the door with an extreme frown. "I'm afraid you two have earned yourself a night of detention. I will inform your classmates that you will not be leaving with them today." She turned to them with a wide, froggy smile. "Instead, you will be spending the evening hours with me."

The kitten plates on the walls beside the doors rattled when Umbridge shut the door. Silence stretched between the two meisters, hard and cold. The kittens retreated back into their bowls, looking between the meisters with wary glances.

Finally, it was too much for Maka to take.

"Do you have anything to say for yourself?" Maka asked Kid when the vile, pink woman had gone. "Anything at all?"

Kid cleared his throat a few times, straightening the skull tie around his neck. "Umm . . . nice speech."

Maka cut him a hard glare. "Anything else?"

". . . I'm sorry?"

"What did you do to me?" Maka turned in her desk, facing Kid for the first time since they'd been shoved together into the small room.

Kid levelled his ringed yellow eyes directly at her. "I kissed you."

A vein throbbed near Maka's temple. "Besides that."

Something flickered behind Kid's eyes; a shadow that swooped and shuttered down across his pupils. "I'm protecting my friends, Maka."

"No, you're being stupid." Maka clenched her fists. "Besides, you don't have to worry about protecting me. I can take care of myself." She turned her head, and her pigtails whipped sharply against the side of her neck.

"Yes, but you can't take care of yourself and Soul at the same time, can you?"

Maka turned her head so fast the back of her neck radiated pain all the way down her spine. "What?"

Kid leaned forward and the desk beneath him creaked loudly. "I know what happened last night. It was exactly what I'd hoped would never come to pass." The yellow in his eyes flickered brightly, and he turned away sharply, breathing hard. "I warned my father about it, before we left. I told him not to put you guys on the mission. I told him . . ." Kid's hands clenched into painful fists.

"Kid." Maka worked to make her voice gentle. It was a struggle against the desperate curiosity rising within her, but she managed to smooth the roughness. A little. "What's going on? You can tell me."

He rested his head on the desktop, blinking one heavy yellow lid in her direction. "Can I?" He shook his head, looking away. "No. The demon's already got a taste of you. He'll come back for more."

Maka's breath was sharp. "What demon? You mean the thing from last night?"

"I went looking for it." Kid kept his face down, clawing at the wooden desktop table with white-knuckled fists. "Last night after the DA meeting. I wanted to make it pay for hurting you. I wanted to . . . Anyway, when I couldn't find it I devised a plan on how to get my revenge. How to show it that it couldn't hurt you – couldn't hurt anyone."

Maka eyed her friend warily. There was a ferocity, a bleak intensity in Kid's tone that she never liked to hear. It was something that only came out in small measures, like when the symmetry of her pigtails was off, or when Black Star cracked the perfect architecture of the DWMA.

But this . . . this was something else. The full force of it knocked the wind out of her and chilled the blood in her veins.

This was his reaper heritage. This was what he would look like if he was a true reaper (a shinigami – another name for a reaper, as Hermione had told her).

She didn't like it much.

Especially when the look on his face was frightening enough to scatter all the kittens from their plates. The coach cushions deflated like popped air balloons and the pink paint on the very walls around her seemed to lose their color. They dimmed and darkened until the room was nothing but a bleak reflection of itself.

"How –?" She swallowed harshly. "How'd you do that?"

Kid turned to her with a blank expression in his eyes. A white band circled around his forehead, glowing in the dimly lit room.

Maka bit her lip and sat on her hands, trying to blink the fear out of her eyes.

He's your FRIEND! She screamed at herself. He'd never hurt you!

"I took his power away from him," Kid said simply, leaning back in his chair as far as it would allow him to go.

"His power?"

"His influence over you." Kid blinked one eye at Maka. She watched in horror as the other filled with dark liquid, like ink being poured into a glass water. The yellow was eclipsed by the darkness which quickly expanded, growing and filling out beneath Kid's skin. "I took it away from him. He can't hurt you anymore."

The black blood spread down Kid's face, trickling like a waterfall down his chin and across his collarbones. Maka's mouth tasted like iron, like fear, like pain and misery and death. Kid shifted in his chair, resting his chin on his palm and smiling at Maka. His grin shifted easily into a high chuckle that morphed into a spasmodic fit of giggles. The black blood continued to flow through the lines of face, spilling down his mouth and spreading through the cracks of his white teeth.

"What's wrong, Maka?" He asked. Black blood trickled from the corner of his mouth as he spoke, spilling down his blackened chin and dripping onto the wooden desk beneath his fingers. "You look troubled," he grinned.

"Miss Albarn?"

Kid's laugh was all Maka could hear.

"MISS ALBARN!"

Maka turned sharply, jerking her chin into Umbridge's meaty face. Both women recoiled and Kid stifled a fit of giggles, throwing his hands over his mouth.

"Are you feeling well, Miss Albarn?" Umbridge said stiffly, folding her meaty hand gently around her own thick cheek. "You look quite pale."

"I'm fine." Maka slid Kid a look out of the corner of her eye, but he wasn't looking at her. The side of his face was drenched in shadow, and the kittens on the plates by his head hadn't returned to their normal spots. "I don't know about Kid, though."

"He's quite alright." Umbridge didn't even spare him a glance. She waved her hand dismissively in his direction. "You may go, Mr. Kid as long as you promise: no more inappropriate conduct."

Kid nodded slowly at the same time Maka's jaw clenched tightly.

"So that's it?" Maka growled as Kid stood, slowing unfolding himself from the table's small confines. "He gets off with a warning while I'm stuck here."

"You and I still have some matters to attend to, Miss Albarn." Umbridge flashed another stiff smile in the ashy meister's direction, scurrying over to her desk and retrieving a piece of paper and a quill. "Goodbye, Mr. Kid. I'll see you in class tomorrow."

Maka watched Kid leave with wide eyes. He turned towards her with an eerie grin, wiping a lingering trial of black blood from the corners of his lips. Maka squeaked in horror. He grinned at her, holding a finger over his mouth with his lips puckered.

"Shhh," he mouthed behind Umbridge's back, slipping out of the office door.

Maka shifted uneasily in her chair, sitting awkwardly on her clenched fists. Her eyes scanned the slight distance between herself and the door to Umbridge's office. She could probably make it before the fat lady turned away from her desk, but the door slammed shut and locked tightly before Maka could attempt to flee.

"Don't bother." Umbridge was smiling when she turned around, folding the feather of a red quill around her finger and laying it gently on the desk in front of Maka. "I take my detention time very seriously."

Maka ground her teeth, sitting on her palms to avoid reaching up and strangling the pink woman.

"Now, then. Shall we get started?" Umbridge picked up the quill and fingered the feather lovingly, tracing it between her ringed, meaty fingers. "You have two options here, Miss Albarn. You can either tell me about what happened the other night, or . . ." She rubbed the quill between her fingers. "Well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it."

Maka tilted her head. "The other night?" She blinked innocently.

"In the Hospital Ward." Umbridge stood, running the quill thoughtfully beneath her chin. "I heard there was a . . . disturbance."

Maka rolled her eyes. I'll say.

"The headmaster refused to tell me anything about it." Umbridge crossed her ankles, frowning into her palm. "Of course, I could cite him from refusing to comply to Ministry regulations, but . . ." her froggy eyes alighted on Maka. "I'd rather here your side of the story."

The ashy-blonde meister narrowed her eyes. "How do you know I was involved?"

"Eye-witness." Umbridge's grin grew a fraction. "Poor Heather. Such a gullible child."

"What did you –?"

Umbridge waved her hand. "Nothing. Nothing. I didn't do anything to the poor girl. She's fine. Resting in her common room, safe and sound."

Maka ground her teeth. Then why don't I believe you?

"If you could, Miss Albarn," Umbridge tapped the quill's point against the wooden desk. "I would like you to tell me everything you can about what happened the other night."

"Why should I?" The words flew unbidden from Maka's mouth.

Umbridge's eyebrow tipped upwards. "Why shouldn't you?"

The kittens behind Umbridge returned to their plates, watching the two ladies with wide, blinking eyes. The mother licked behind her ears, flipping her paw in Maka's direction.

"I don't know you."

"I don't know you."

"I'm not some wizard you can squash under your thumb."

"Oh, no." Umbridge's grin was three sizes too wide. "You're something different."

The kittens stilled. The pink room darkened. Umbridge's froggy eyes bugged out of her head.

Maka froze too, keeping with the chilly atmosphere of the room. ". . . Is that a bad thing?"

The pink in Umbridge's cheeks burned a fiery red. "That depends."

"On what?"

"On whether or not you answer my question."

So they had come full circle.

Maka crossed her arms over her chest. "What do you want to know?"

Umbridge tapped the quill against her desk. "Everything."

"Everything, huh?"

What was everything?

Everything was the . . .

Black blood. Demon creature. Soul. Professor Dumbledore.

Black blood. Lies. Kid. Scythe.

Black blood. Black. Kid. Dumbledore.

Black blood. Demon. Soul.

Black blood. Tristan.

Black Blood.

BLACK BLOOD.

Lord Death would sooner leave Death City than Maka would give the secrets of the mad power to Professor Umbridge.

Maka leaned forward, dropping her voice. "Do you have any idea what you're dealing with?" Her lips pulled back from her teeth in a feral smile. "The . . ." Her teeth clicked together. "Never mind. Just know, it's not to be messed with. Especially by someone like you." Maka stared at the witch's bleak soul – nothing like the prim pink colors she surrounded herself with. "Someone already so flush with madness."

"Madness?" Umbridge tipped backwards with a hand pressed dramatically over her heart. "I have no such thing."

"There are lots of types of madness." Maka narrowed her eyes at the pink Professor. "The messy kind, the chaotic kind, the kind that derives from being all neat and orderly." Maka's eyes circled around the room. "And power-hungry."

"How dare you make such accusations!" Umbridge stood pointing a thick ringed finger between Maka's eyes. "Never in all my life have I been so insulted."

"Oh, please." Maka crossed her arms over her chest.

"Well, I never –!"

"Are we done here?" Maka stood, brushing dust off her trailing black overcoat. "'Cause Soul and I have some work to do tomorrow and I'd really like to go over our battle plan before –"

"THAT'S IT!"

Umbridge roughly grabbed Maka's wrist, shoving her back down into her seat. She stormed over to her desk, flattening her meaty palms heavily against the aged wood. A teacup on the edge rattled noisily and the kittens on the plates behind the desk mewled pitifully.

"I've decided on a better punishment for you." Umbridge continued, her movements stiff with fury. She grabbed three pieces of paper off her desk, knocking the teacup aside. She slammed the paper in front of Maka and handed her the blood-red quill. "Write."

Maka's fingers were rigid around the quill's end. "You don't understand, Miss Umbridge." Her gaze flicked to the door. "There are thing I have to do. More important than –"

"Write, Miss Albarn!" Umbridge pointed to the paper.

Maka slowly lowered the quill tip to the paper. "What do you want me to write?

Umbridge smiled slowly. "Your partner's name."

Maka tipped a thin blonde eyebrow. "Soul's name?"

Her grin widened. "His full name, please."

"Umm." Maka placed the quill end on paper. "Okay."

She traced out Soul's name – Soul Eater Evans – onto the thin paper. Umbridge snatched the paper away from her when she was done, scanning the letters with greedy determination.

"Evans." She smiled. "Good, very good."

"Can I go – AH!" The quill dropped from Maka's fingers as a searing pain burned through the skin of her arm. She gasped, clapping her hand over the skin as hot red letters burned through the sleeve of her overcoat.

She peeled the fabric away with shaky fingers, reading with abject horror the words blazoned onto her skin. The letters, all too familiar to Maka, spelled out the name SOUL EATER EVANS in her small, curly font.

"What –?" the pain faded as the red letters settled solidly into her skin. Traces of blood curled around the edges of the letters. "What . . . is this?"

Umbridge smiled widely. "Your punishment."

Maka curled her hand protectively over her aching skin. "This is . . ." The letters still burned beneath her fingers. She closed her eyes, fisting the skin around the fresh wounds. "Crazy."

"Write his name." Umbridge stood, reaching for the quill and holding it out for Maka. "Fifty times." Her grin stretched almost impossibly wide across her face. "That should be enough for today."

Maka gave the crazy pink woman one last glance before slowly lowering the quill back to the paper.

SOUL EATER EVANS she wrote, cringing as his name was burned permanently into her skin.