She runs as fast as her long legs carry her, her feet alternate and hammering drumbeats at the same pace as her heart, up those steps two, no, three at a time and down the winding corridor.
Breathing becomes hard somewhere along the way and her vision becomes foggy- in her desperation to reach Liz and Patty, it takes her some time to process why.
When she eventually does, her heart hits the floor.
It's Ragnorak.
He's in the school, shit, shit…
She stops in her tracks, her black boots squeaking unpleasantly against the tiled floor.
Does she turn back? Go back to Kid? No, she can't do that. He's busy with Soul, anyway.
Does she stop and fight? No, she can't do that either. She's useless with no weapon.
She decides to keep up her pace and run, but feels a force blocking her pathway. She tries to push past it with all her strength; keep going. It's like trying to swim through thick treacle, the air is almost solid. Still, never one to give up, she keeps up resistance.
"Nggh!" she grunts, feeling her muscles start to burn with the frantic need to get past. "Let me THROUGH!" she yells at the entity, trying vainly to channel her wavelength and propagate it through the air, without much avail.
That was really more Black Star's schtick.
The thick foggy treacle air formulates into something more tangible, that familiar old sword from their fight in the street, weeks ago. She growls. "What do you want?"
"You." The voice emerges in a rumble and the answer sends a shiver through her bones. The word pre-empts a wild, winging attack as the sword comes flying at her. She barely manages to deflect the attack with the bottom of her foot extended out in a kicking motion; dodges the next two in a similar fashion.
"That all you got?" she spits. Ragnorak just laughs at her.
"Good question. Hey Sid… a little help?" he taunts, giving Maka a moment of pause. She frowns and cocks her head to the side.
"Sid…?" she frowns, nonplussed as the half-zombie man steps out of the shadows to grinningly grip the sword Ragnorak in his hands. "Sid!" she repeats, her intonation shifting rapidly to one of abject horror. "What are you doing!?"
Sid uncharacteristically laughs and swings the demon sword high above his head and slams it heavily down, leaving Maka only a single second to scoot out of the way to avoid being split in two, Medusa-style. She breathes heavily.
Dammit, he's manipulated Sid, too? This wasn't looking so good.
She decides in a hot second that she needs to remove herself from this situation; and fast. Now that Ragnorak's collected together in a sword, he's not so thick in the air- she takes this chance to bob and weave through Sid's clean slices, making some headway down the corridor. Only a few yards!
"Running away? Not so brave now, huh Maka?" the voice comes after her, heavy and taunting.
She makes a thick noise of irritation through her teeth- his vernacular hadn't gotten any less childish in the time he'd been away- and she ducks and rolls just out of their grasp once more, throwing herself through the classroom door and kicking it closed with her foot behind her.
Those sparring inside- Kim, Jackie, Black Star, Tsubaki- they all turn to Maka's heaving figure in the door.
"It's Ragno-" she barely manages to gasp out before the sword comes hacking through the door and creating a big demon-sword shaped hole in the thing.
Seconds later, Sid's kicked what remains of the thing open and Tsubaki's shuriken mode comes flying out of Black Star's grip and towards the zombie-teacher, who throws up Ragnorak in a deflection. Black Star himself races towards Sid and attempts to inject him with wavelength but doesn't quite get close enough before he has to jump away again away from the swishing blade.
Maka scampers away from the emerging battle scene and yells at Liz and Patty.
"Liz, Patty! Kid needs you guys in the dungeon, now!" she cries at them. "It's Soul. He's out."
Liz swears and the two of them take off, running past the still-sparring Black Star and Sid while Kim desperately tries to get a read on Ragnorak's soul, using her magic techniques. She closes her eyes as Jacqueline watches, but shakes her head after a few seconds.
"His wavelength is all over the place, it's mental. It's almost like… it's almost like Asura's wavelength." She concludes. "I can barely sense Sid's wavelength through it…"
Jackie clutches her partners arm. "Can't you do anything to slow him down?"
Kim tries her best to summon something but she's powerless; the magic infused with Ragnorak's soul, presumably by Medusa, is too strong for someone of her weak status to override. She shakes head her 'no' and her features set in a miserable expression. "Our attack will be useless against Ragnorak." She grits.
"Not Sid, though." Jackie replies, a gleam in her eye. "If we can get Black Star and Tsubaki to separate meister and weapon… we can work on Sid while Tsubaki uses her enchanted sword mode on Ragnorak!"
Kim nods in agreement and Jackie transforms into her outstretched hand.
"Star! We're with you!" she yells. They jump into the fight from behind Ragnorak's attacking figure, Kim slicing Sid in the back with a line of brightly burning orange flames, causing him to yell out and lurch forward in pain. This in turn, gives Black Star an opportunity to channel his paralyzing wavelength directly into Ragnorak's sword form. The weapon screeches out in pain and Sid stands frozen for a second, before shaking his head and tightening his grip on the sword hilt.
"Did you feel that?!" Kim breathes. "The madness wavelength! It fell, just then! For a second." She says. "We need to keep at this! Maybe we can get Sid back!"
They continue the same trajectory of attacks, Kim leading the fight and Black Star not letting up his wavelength attacks with Tsubaki in tow. In fact, Maka watches with hopeful trepidation as Ragnorak's attack grow weaker; predictable.
They can beat him…!
Wait, no…
Maka can sense something. A shift, though it's too difficult to tell exactly what exactly has shifted in a split second.
Sid falls to the floor and Black Star freezes in place.
What's happening?
The three girls stare on, nonplussed, until Maka figures it out and screams out to them:
"Tsubaki, it's Black Star! Ragnorak's infecting him!" she yells out, as Tsubaki transforms back into her human form and turns her weapon in confusion. Even without Maka's advanced soul perception, she can sense that there's something happening here; a power struggle happening inside her ninja meister as she watches. Black Star's eyes are closed like he's about to do one of his signature moves, except he's not moving. He emits a low growl as everyone in the room takes a deep breath in unison.
"Star?" Tsubaki calls out to her partner, a little tearfully. Meanwhile, Kim rushes to Sid's side and stares up at Black Star, her expression baffled. "What's going on with Sid?" Tsubaki calls.
"He's unconscious…" Kim replies, baffled.
Black Star starts to laugh and Kim readies herself in her best battle stance, Jackie in her hands and pre-emptively spitting flames from her lantern form. A scowl etches on her face and Tsubaki steps back from her weapon, sensing something very off.
The laugh coming from him turns louder, more aggressive.
The power-struggle inside him ends, because there's a clear winner.
Maka barely has time to react before the blue-haired boy switches over; makes a dash for her- seemingly impervious to the spray of fire which assaults his left-side. The only thing which stops him from breaking every bone in her body upon impact are the chains which appear around his torso and restrain him from reaching her in time.
"LET GO OF ME!" he screams, voice reduced to a shrill yell, fighting against Tsubaki's chains which temporarily protect Maka. She looks on, frozen in her shock.
"Maka, get out of here, now!" Tsubaki screams from inside her weapon form. "You need to run!" she tries desperately to warn her friend, who nods and takes off again, making a dash for the door.
Where the hell is she supposed to go? She can't do anything without her weapon…
She turns back just once before leaving, watching uselessly as Ragnorak's sword slices through Tsubaki's chains and frees Black Star.
Her legs speed up just a little.
She figures she should check on Kid- let him know that Sid's down, and Black Star's turned.
Their chances are looking slimmer and slimmer by the second.
She realizes with a jolt that her phone is still in her pocket and whips it out as she runs, trying to send a text to Kilik and Ox- telling them to get their asses back to the DWMA, pronto. Although, part of her doubts that they're still going to be awake- she reminds herself that they've already been woken up once this evening.
She sends a quick text to Marie, too. After all, they're going to need all the manpower they can get.
She round the corner and practically flies down the steps, but before she gets to the dungeon- she runs into him. Kid and his weapons, with Azusa in tow.
"Maka! Maka, are you okay?" he asks, cle arly concerned. "Thank you." he gestures to his weapons.
"Fine," She nods. "Where's Soul?"
"He... he got away." he admits, and Maka's face crumbles.
No.
Kid's expression is overcast, teeming with anger. "I'm going to call for the others. The school's already on lockdown- nobody's leaving and nobody's getting in. I can't have Soul roaming the streets as he is."
"It's too late, Kid. Ragnorak's already inside. Listen. He's… Sid's unconscious," she pants, trying to get all the information out of her as quickly as possible. "Black Star attacked me. The madness has him." She shakes her head. "I don't know why, Ragnorak's targeting… me. Kid, I'm useless without Soul."
Kid nods. "Crap," He replies. "Maka. Stay down here. I'm going to neutralize the situation with Black Star." He nods over to Azusa. "Azusa, you should stay with her." the deathscythe nods affirmatively as Kid sprints off in the opposite direction. That had been happening a lot, recently.
She wishes she could have Soul here, right now. For a few reasons, actually.
"Shouldn't we be helping?" she sighs to her present company, after Kid's disappeared.
Azusa barely casts a glance her way before replying. "I can use my soul perception and work out if we'll be needed. In the meantime, we should lay low, like Kid said. You're especially in danger without your weapon partner."
"What about your weapon partner?" she asks, perhaps a little intrusively.
"I don't use one." Azusa frowns. "Come on, follow me."
Azusa leads her down the basement steps once again, but they hardly get down ten before she stops in her tracks. "Maka, I can sense a disturbance. It's likely Soul, but it's hard to tell with the madness muddling the wavelengths. Just a few rooms this way… I'm going to check it out." she jerks her thumb towards a fork in the hallway. "You should keep going, find a room to hide out in." she instructs, pointing in one direction where Maka should go, and then rapidly sprinting away in the other direction.
Maka scowls and keeps on trudging, feeling incredibly useless.
Is this what Soul felt like when he couldn't fight Giriko on his own?
Now deep in the dungeons again, she stumbles across the room where her and Soul had first met, all those years. The one with the piano in. Something about it calls her in- perhaps the promise of a pleasant memory in the midst of battle? She's not sure, exactly. Maybe it's knowing that she might not see Soul again, after this.
Refusing to let the thought consume her, she fiddles with the knob and pushes the door open; coughing as the musk of the place fills her lungs.
It sure was dark down here…
She sits down on the piano stool which decorates the dusty old grand piano in the middle of the room, the first one she'd ever heard Soul play for her- the only one she'd ever heard him play.
She sits down on the thing, thoughtfully, wondering how this whole thing was going to play out. Hoping that Kid reaches Black Star in time; hoping that Azusa could hold off Soul. Hoping that somehow, Professor Stein stayed out of this.
She reaches out, as if considering playing a few of the notes but seems to think better of it- she doesn't want to call attention to her location, after all.
All of a sudden, she hears a noise from behind her.
Someone; something lurking in the shadow, steps forward toward the piano.
How hadn't she sensed them before…?
Who is-
She inhales swiftly and begins to whip her head around but, before she can fully turn it to get a look at her companion, a sharp pointy blade stretches out in front of her and presses painfully against the front of her neck.
She holds her breath, unable to move herself forward or take a glance backward.
Shit.
She flickers her eyes downwards to get a look at the weapon that's attacking her. Her eyelids narrow as she struggles to see in the dinginess of her current whereabouts, but she does eventually manage to get a proper look at the blade digging into her skin.
It's a red and black scythe.