Author's Note : So… hi? Yeah… this took a while. RL things, mainly.
As promised, this is the second of three parts I'm doing with another author but the last chapter of Fiona's set up. Then I'll go back to doing pure ninja things when I have the muse for it. I think Itachi's next, to be honest.
Who am I collaborating with? Orion Smith, the author behind An Odd Turn. RBWY hadn't been a fandom I read much for before he and I started talking, but I do like how he wrote his SI/OC.
Death Weapon Meister Academy, Death City, Nevada
The first order of business was actually getting Fiona out of the Death Room. Which ended up harder than it sounded.
The three-star meister Sid Barett ended up being a very affable man with dark skin, similarly dark hair in cornrows, and with tattoos twining up both biceps. Dressed in a tank top and baggy jeans and with a bandana tied around his forehead… kind of in place any generic shinobi placed their village's hitai-ate.
The dead woman had what boiled down to two different reactions to him greeting Shinigami-sama.
First was: No way in hell does that look professional.
Second reaction: I wonder how many underestimate him for looking like a two-bit gangster?
Fiona labeled the first reaction as hers, the other was obviously Natsumi's.
Sid got the basic rundown of what was going on, and that he was to keep an eye on her. The Death God didn't phrase it that way, obviously, but a certain ninja mistress of assassination and her lifetime of less than straightforward professional/personal habits made it pretty clear to her what was being left unsaid but not unheard.
Once everything was said, or not said, Fiona did intend to follow the man out of the area… or room. She wasn't sure about the particulars, but the fact there were windows floating in the sky at fixed positions said she was indoors even if it didn't look it.
It turned out the slightly demonic, ex-Kurama kekkai genkai could not actually leave her soul behind. There was a limited range, about twenty feet or so, but Fiona could not move past that.
She got as far as the actual DWMA hallways outside the Death Room, listening to Sid explain what the Academy taught with a measure of bewilderment, before she came to a rather abrupt halt. It wasn't so much as running into a wall as her leg lost substance as she pitched forward when nothing supported her forward momentum.
Shinigami-sama had sounded a little surprised to see her suddenly come back into being in his trippy wasteland-room, but gleefully abandoned Spirit Alban and his attempts to get the Old God to return to work in favor of helping her figure out what the hell had happened.
Subsequent tests of her disappearing act, some adjustments of an overly bothersome paperweight's location, a re-found broken off spire of her crystalized soul, two round-house kicks to a pervert's face, and a good three hours later... Fiona learned she was pretty much tethered to her own sparkly soul-rock.
Outside of it's influence, she could not exist. The broken piece, the part that fell from the oversized desk just before she awoke here, gave her more area to move within. If she walked out from one crystal's range, she appeared either at the edge of her range opposite of where she left it or into the new area anchored by another crystal shard if it was in that direction.
The smaller bit was a lot less obvious or showy, and Sid temporally solved her tether issue by wrapping a length of leather cord around one end and tying it to his key ring so she could follow him outside of the Death Room.
Fiona still found it incredibly galling she was leashed to another. There was no real blame to be passed out for it, it just simply was and none of them had known before she phased out of existence at one point and into existence at another.
Shinigami-sama promised to see about breaking more spikes off her soul if it could be done, so one could be given to her to free up her range of movement. The dead woman couldn't quite ignore the dry voice of Natsumi in the back of her head adding on a qualifier of 'when you are no longer an unknown threat that needs watching'.
She didn't have much time after that, because the extra time figuring out her limitations as a dead woman meant Sid was now running late for his classes.
That was the point she also learned the man was a teacher.
"You'll probably find it boring," the 'Three Star Meister' admitted to her wryly, "other than Soul Studies and the Battle Arts classes, the EAT and NOT classes are pretty much the same for any high school."
"It's either been more than thirty years, or around fifteen, since I last attended any formal schooling." Fiona informed him dryly in return as he unlocked the lecture hall he was going to be using. "Depending on which way you want to view it, I probably need a bit of brushing up on the subjects anyways."
Sid smirked, tossing his keys and her crystal bit to the desk in the middle of the room set up as a lecture hall. "I'll deputize you as a teacher's aide, at least then you'll have something other to do than sit and stew over… ah…"
"Being dead?" She quipped dryly, examining the tiers of desks set up in graduating rings around the 'lecture pit'. Very different from her own schooling, but somewhat similar to how Konohagakure no Sato had set up their own Academy classrooms. Just a bit more circular than rectangular.
"Yeah, that." The man rubbed his jawline, considering her in a way that painfully reminded the kunoichi part of her about her dead taicho. Fiona quickly shoved that memory she never experienced to the back of her mind before he spoke again. "Just for today. Tomorrow's Saturday, no classes. Black Star, my adoptive son, and I can help you figure out your fighting style and how you'll react to things now."
"I'd appreciate it." She admitted slowly, not really sure about the inclusion of his kid in nailing down her probably overly-violent reactions.
Natsumi had practically lived for nine years through two wars with a katana in hand, tossing oversized trench/throwing knives about and spitting bullets of water at things. Fiona had shot things up with a rifle and tossed the occasional grenade.
A soldier with all the paranoia of a jōnin kunoichi was bad enough, one with all the skills of an ANBU captain of assassination was… a very dark road to dwell on.
Chakra. Did she still have it? Was it just mind-over-matter, since she literally had no matter?
…could she still use fūinjutsu even if she had no blood to make the ink with?
Fiona blinked down at her own hands.
Could she bleed?
\V/
Coliseum, Death Festival Arena
"-because I'm such a big guy, of course you'd want to test your small skills against me!"
"You are literally half my size, runt."
Black Star twitched violently, then crossed his arms over his chest and snorted loudly. "I'm going to be the bigger person here, and ignore your small, petty complaints in order for my bigness to shine even more."
Fiona tossed Sid a rather skeptical look, but all the man did was grin back at her.
Oooh-kay. She couldn't even really say anything, from Natsumi's memories she knew shinobi had been weirder.
The instructor meister's adopted kid was a blue haired brat of a boy, wearing a sleeveless and high collared shirt with cargo pants. His hair stuck up even worse than Minato's had, almost as much as Kakashi's and that was saying something. For the only other identifying mark, there was a white scar-like star on one bicep. It might actually have been a birthmark, but it was very sharply defined for a genetic quirk.
Then again, the Nara-kitty General of all things Sneaky had known people that had geometric shapes and strange markings as a kind of genetic stamp on their line. The assassin's ex-Kurama kekkai genkai wasn't really all that sure how divorced this reality was from that, or how either were from her original reality. Entirely possible it was just a very precise birthmark.
His… demon weapon partner seemed more promising, Tsubaki Nakatsukasa seemed more like a kunoichi than her meister partner. Actually, she seemed rather typical for a well-mannered chūnin from a mid-sized shinobi clan… almost like an Uchiha kunoichi without the arrogance.
Fiona wondered if Natsumi had been some kind of elitist prick of a woman, or if it had just been a cruel sort of common sense not to get attached to the less trained members of her home village's shadow military. It was probably more likely to be the latter, and she'd probably be able to figure that out if she specifically dredged all the memories she never experienced, but she wasn't exactly feeling that charitable right now that she was going to be testing her shinobi skills.
Black Star, who had been getting progressively twitchier the longer she had ignored him, suddenly charged her with his fists.
He looked pretty damn surprised to suddenly switch places with her instead of connect with his swing. The preteen lost his footing in shock, ending up sprawled out on the ground and owlishly blinking at the sudden change of location.
The kawamari technique really was kind of broken as a jutsu. Unfortunately not very usable on targets with chūnin-level chakra control, but against those with no chakra… Natsumi had rather badly neglected the art, but she had gone from using fellow academy students as targets to ANBU level threats as targets. If you knew your own chakra well enough, it was hard to be snagged by the technique.
Fiona sighed and did it again when the young meister tried charging her back. No hand signs, barely a twitch in the amount of chakra she had. At least, according to Natsumi's memories that was her chakra.
Too bad she hadn't prepped for this, expecting more than an E-ranked jutsu to be effective enough to get her through this 'spar'. The log substitution gimmick would've been funny, but that required either enough chakra control to use the technique on two separate targets and then another. The log, which normally held a bit of the shinobi in question's chakra, and a suitably far enough target then said ninja's person and said log.
Ebisu had made it work to the point he became a damn fine chūnin on his way to jōnin rank, but an ANBU General had little to no time to observe her fellow shinobi put effort into refining their personal tricks.
Having the prepped log was kind of the deal-breaker. Natsumi never favored the technique enough for Fiona to now know how to do it herself. The most the assassin used was the occasional object lying around and herself, meaning this was probably the limit of what she had done with it.
"Um… Black Star? I don't think that's going to work." Tsubaki hesitantly spoke up from the sidelines, eyeing her meister worriedly as he dusted himself off with stiff movements.
The kid spun around to face the young woman, giving her a slightly forced grin and a thumbs up. Fiona could swear she saw echoes of Gai's good-guy pose in that. "Don't worry about it, Tsubaki! We're just getting the basics out of the way!"
"Actually," Fiona interjected wryly, "this isn't the basics. This is pre-basic ninjutsu. The kawamari jutsu is one of the techniques collectively referred to as the Academy Three, and is taught and mastered by shinobi-hopefuls long before any of them actually become Academy graduates and the lowest rank of ninja. A genin."
Because Natsumi hadn't favored the jutsu, she was getting a kick out of using it. Petty was apparently her middle name.
"Keep your cool, Star." Sid called out, slotting a glance Fiona's way. "Next is…?"
"Pre-basic genjutsu. The Henge." Actually pulling her hands out of her pockets to make the snake seal, Fiona adopted Black Star's physical appearance. Then she idly inspected the other two that were now greatly taller than her borrowed form. "…and now I know why Natsumi hated being short. This is weird."
It was really little more than an illusion, but messing with another's head was so ninja that she found she could barely help herself.
"WHY YOU-!"
Another kawamari swapped their positions, but the kid skidded instead of flopped this time. However, by the time he turned his forward momentum around, he was confronted with three Fiona's.
"And last is the Bunshin no Jutsu. Again, a genjutsu."
Natsumi knew the kage bunshin, she and Minato learned it from the forbidden scroll around the same time they were looking up the deadly part of the Dead Reaper's Seal, but couldn't make more than one without draining herself to exhaustion levels. That was probably too risky to attempt if Fiona was also going to be exploring Natsumi's rather basic understanding of taijutsu she got from teaching Mebuki and Gai combatives, but the assassin had known the mizu bunshin technique.
...but she needed a decent amount of water for that.
Clones were imperfect copies, and practically a bonfire to any decent sensor-nin's senses. The assassin hadn't used them much either.
Black Star proved himself more than a hot-headed brat, focusing in on the one clone with a moving mouth.
It wasn't that hard to circumvent the most basic clone jutsu ever invented, another reason it was regulated to helping academy instructors weed out those with no talent in ninjutsu or genjutsu. Fiona did at least note the brat wasn't nearly as thick as he seemed, dismissing the illusionary clones to slide into the starting kata one tokubetsu jōnin had refined and taught to an assassin and her taijutsu using student a world away.
"Now we can get to the basics."
"Finally decided to be serious? We can do that too. Tsubaki!"
"Right." The demon weapon responded quickly, a little startled but jumping into their little arena without needing extra prompting.
She jumped and twisted in mid-air, falling as not a young woman but as a pair of hand-scythes attached by a chain. Fiona was fascinated, and wondered if there was a katana demon weapon somewhere.
Catching the woman-turned-weapon, Black Star charged the blonde ex-soldier again.
Except this time, when Fiona substituted herself with him, he kept on running.
Sliding out of her taijutsu stance and stuffing her hands into her pockets, she watched with Sid as the young meister charged headlong into a wall even with Tsubaki trying to get Black Star to realize his target wasn't in front of him anymore.
"Genjutsu." She informed the dark-skinned man easily enough when he shot her a look as his charge knocked himself out. "I never said we were going to be testing taijutsu, and I need a katana before testing what I recall of Natsumi's Hatake clan kenjutsu."
It was actually a kinjutsu, but that was actually the only pseudo genjutsu-type Natsumi had known. That, a Kurama clan jutsu cross between genjutsu and physical chakra constructs, and Yin Release illusions. Fiona could probably reverse engineer genjutsu from the Yin Release techniques, she knew how to do that from the long hours the assassin put in with the heir-then-head of the Uchiha clan and his fiancée-then-wife, and it would be something to do during the night.
As if the whole 'not-dead-yet' thing wasn't frustrating enough, she didn't need to sleep at all.
The phrase 'you can sleep when you're dead' apparently didn't actually apply to her.
Fiona wanted to know if that would hold if she drained herself of chakra, because one of the symptoms of chakra exhaustion was tiredness. It might not, there was the demon chakra to deal with and the question of where the Yang energy she was using was coming from.
She was pretty sure she hadn't stole all of Natsumi's physical energy as well as her excess spiritual.
"Okay then." Sid spoke when it became apparent Black Star had knocked himself out for the time being. "Breakfast?"
"…I'm still not hungry."
"Might as well see what actually eating will do to you. You might not need to eat at all, but since I am getting a bit of extra pay to keep you fed too we might as well test it." The Three Star Knife Meister shrugged the issue off, waving a hand to the road the four of them had taken when his ward had gotten hyped up about testing Fiona's skills for a general assessment. "I can't stand for you starving yourself for no other reason than to see what it does to you. That's just the kind of man I am."
Natsumi would've let it happen, since all shinobi needed to know how long they could go without basic needs in order to plan around it happening eventually.
Fiona ignored that thought, she was getting pretty good at ignoring the reminders of a petite Nara assassin a world away and what she would've done or not done. It was probably more like not thinking about it or sticking to the more trivial parts, but the woman's dead kekkai genkai would live with that.
"Thanks."
\V/
Outside Sid Barret's apartment
It took Black Star two weeks to figure out how to stop falling for Natsumi's kinjutsu, within which Fiona got used to grading the homework Sid assigned and got her rating as an expert markswoman from their rifle range back. Another two weeks of getting poked and prodded by a woman named Medusa, who was in charge of the DWMA's medical wing, while catching up with the slight variations of world history here.
Fiona didn't need to eat or sleep, but she could eat and turn it into energy with a bit of internal pain. Drinking things hurt less, so it was more likely to see her drink than eat something. She could probably sleep, as in take a nap or something, but she didn't feel tired at all yet and it had been a full damn month.
The not-sleeping aspect of her new reality wasn't really all that bad, because the lack of it had bored her and she ended up spending several quiet nights with Shinigami-sama in the Death Room.
For a God of Death, the being was being surprisingly helpful in helping her work out both her mess of a mind and certain aspects of her existence. The dead soldier did have memories of Inoichi helping Natsumi through grief counseling, and it did help, but a few times when poking that sordid mess she felt like cringing. Why the baby assassin put up with the heavy-handed beginnings she would never really know, she was merely thankful the then-girl hadn't murdered the blond Yamanaka in a fit of grief induced rage. Some of the shit they got up to in those 'therapy' sessions...
Shinigami-sama also helped her pin down a few things even the military trained amateur psychologist would rather have not touched with a ten-foot-pole. After a few whacks upside the head, at least.
Like the fact her Kurama influence was making her more sour about Natsumi than was probably warranted, her 'bijuu' influence just compounded the rage now, and that she really had little compulsions against using ninja skills… but she was petty enough to develop her own way rather than stick to what had worked for the assassin once upon a time.
Physically speaking Fiona couldn't leave her crystalized soul behind because her 'form' was little more than a chakra construct in nature. As chakra wasn't a natural force in this world, unlike in the shinobi universe, she needed to remain in range of it to exist. The physical aspect of herself she hadn't understood at first was based off the Kurama/bijuu part of her, both were or could be chakra constructs without a willing 'origin' source that drew off nature energy to sustain their forms.
Literally speaking, she was more of a demon than any jinchuuriki ever was.
She couldn't bleed, upon being stabbed or cut the 'injury' just appeared as a shiny blue-purple-red rent in her form until it sealed over again. Even her clothing exhibited the same behavior, which lead her to figure out she could generate her own weapons as long as they remained within her 'range'. Fūinjutsu was impossible until she figured out how to do it without ink or paper, she had no blood to bleed and no one else had chakra in their very blood here either.
She greatly preferred a rifle in her hands rather than use Tsubaki as a katana against Sid and Mira Naigus, who was apparently the Three Star Meister's usual Death Weapon partner. Not because of any memory issues or such, because other than the reach/height differences it was a fairly relaxing swinging a sword about.
She just really couldn't stop cringing at the clash of steel on steel, because she also couldn't put aside the idea of demon weapons feeling that kind of force no matter how much Tsubaki tried to reassure her that she was fine. A chakra construct of a katana never did last very long against Mira's edges, something to do about her Soul Wavelength being brittle and easy to shatter for a Death Weapon.
That problem was slowly getting better as Fiona adjusted to her new situation, as she came to terms with what she was now, but it was still an issue. Her mostly unwanted 'kunoichi' side was getting more and more paranoid the longer her 'weapons' proved to be less than ideal for fighting the locals.
It was harder for the younger demon weapon to shatter her still brittle Yang-constructs of a katana, therefore something she stuck to using only on the younger pair.
Fiona also didn't ask for a plain steel katana for two reasons. She didn't want to insult Black Star's rather sweetly tempered partner in asking for a different weapon and she didn't want to put Sid in the uncomfortable position of breaking the 'not a possible hostile' illusion his ward and the younger demon weapon was under about her presence.
Mira knew full well, of that the ex-Kurama kekkai genkai knew. However the weirdly mummy-like woman also seemed to know Fiona requested asylum as well, and so was generally pretty indifferent to her presence.
There was a third issue she hadn't yet really thought about too hard.
Katanas reminded her of Natsumi's taicho, which was a different kettle of fish entirely.
You could not have two of the same thing held in the same object without a lot of bleed over. Even slowly working through Natsumi's memories it was still a horror-story and a half, given the kunoichi's mission work as one of the Leaf's longest serving assassins.
There were nice and fluffy moments, with the woman's genin team or the team she taught, if you overlooked the fact they were twelve-year-old kids killing for the first time. Then there were what she was going to call Panther's memories, which… just nightmare fuel. Natsumi's memories of her husband were similar, if not quite in the same category.
Fiona was slightly glad for the fact she didn't sleep. No sleep, no dreams. No nightmares, either.
It made for some very touchy memories of not-her-own, because Hatake Sakumo had been the one to let Mesuji Natsumi enter ANBU and taught her how to survive there. Yes, he also made up for it by teaching her his clan's kenjutsu arts and installed her as practically family to Eri and Kakashi… but the dead solider still cringed away from Natsumi's memories of her 'Wolf-taicho'.
The Leopard Summoner had adored her kenjutsu master, Fiona couldn't quite say the same.
She had also loved her jōnin-sensei, who… actually, the ex-Kurama kekkai genkai couldn't really object too much to. In fact, she rather wished Natsumi had listened to the Toad Sage more when she had been a chūnin.
"HEY, FIONA!"
The dead woman sighed heavily, dropping her gaze from the sky and regarding her teacup instead. Tea, why was she drinking tea? There was perfectly good coffee somewhere in Sid's apartment, she could be drinking that.
She could even go to Deathbucks and finally spend a bit of her pittance of pay for being a teacher's aide. The store which she was not ashamed to admit she snorted at when her gracious host had shown her around Death City her first real day here.
There were a lot of shops and venues that had the word 'death' in it around the city, almost like the entire place was a permanent tribute to Halloween.
Which was kind of understandable when you took in the fact the entire place was built up around a spot the very God of Death had planted himself.
"Sid's inside doing paperwork, Star." Grading tests, she had already done the homework for him and the man shooed her off to do something other than what was becoming her normal after-school activity.
Sitting on the apartment's main stairs and staring blankly at the absolutely bizarre sun probably hadn't been his idea of something different, but the damn thing had a face. It was laughing… and bleeding. Truly macabre, and she had yet to get used to that even months into her 'asylum' here.
"That's nice, not what we're here for." The rather excitable preteen informed her cheerily, puffing out his chest proudly.
Fiona ignored the fact he looked rather like Gai when the then-genin had something to boast to Natsumi about. The twinge of sorrow, that she wouldn't ever see Gai again, wasn't her. Gai had been a very sweet boy, and somehow had the strength of character to stay that way even when he finally became a chūnin then jōnin. However, Fiona had never met the boy-turned-man so she couldn't really feel that much sorrow at never seeing him do anything again.
"This is Soul Eater, he's a friend of mine."
"Sup." The albino teen lazily informed her as he strolled along in Black Star's wake, causing a few more pangs of familiarly for the dead woman.
Jeans and a tee-shirt, the only original piece being the headband the kid wore with a sticker on it. Almost like a very laid-back non-silvered Kakashi without the dick-ish-ness. With… Kisame's teeth?
Blinking a few times, she gave the two of them a bemused smile. That was another thing that was going to need getting used to. Natsumi's world didn't have the monopoly on weird or strange features. "I haven't seen you in class yet, Soul."
"Maka and I, my meister, were out on a long-term assignment. We just got back." The teen informed her, red eyes flicking up and down her form. More specifically, taking in the uniform she had died in and had yet to get around to changing into something else. "I haven't seen you around yet either, Miss Hanson."
"Fiona please. Or Sergeant Hanson, if you insist."
"Military?"
"Army." She confirmed wryly. Shinigami-sama had offered to fix the little issue of never having belonged to this world's military for her, on the condition her service was reassigned to the DWMA for the time being. Fiona had taken him up on that, and at least could use her old rank rather than claim to be a copy of a jōnin kunoichi of Konohagakure or an ANBU captain of the same.
The benefit was that she had records, an ID, and paperwork in this world now... even if she was dead. Apparently being dead or un-dead wasn't quite the career killer here it was in her original world.
"Cool. Meister or Weapon?"
"She's damn good with a katana. Not as good as I am, of course." Black Star boasted, waving a hand at the ghost of a blonde woman. "But decent enough she's good practice even for one as big as me."
Fiona rolled her eyes at the preteen's almost-automatic bragging. He had yet to actually challenge her to do more than C-ranked jutsus in every spar he demanded out of her, and Tsubaki's rather multi-purpose shapeshifting was more of an obstacle to her than the young meister was. "Keep telling yourself that, runt."
"That doesn't exactly answer my question, Star." Soul interjected before the kid fully registered what she had called him.
"Neither. I'm dead." Fiona grinned slightly at the boys' twin expressions of shock. "Part of the reason why I've been reassigned to the DWMA, my situation is a bit unusual."
"…ah, th-that's c-cool." Managed the older teen, wide-eyed but trying to hide how spooked he was. The fact he was too ridged to be calm was a good tip off. "You… don't look like a normal soul."
"Ah… normal has never been me ever since I died." She brushed off, getting up from her spot in order to return the teacup she had brought out with her. "So what did you want, Star?"
"Oh yeah… HEY! I want a re-match!" Shouted the meister, ignoring that his volume made both of the others cringe. Soul more than Fiona. "I'll show everyone that my Way of the Assassin is better than your Way of the Ninja! And I'll be that much closer to becoming a GOD!"
Blowing out a tired sigh, and regretting the fact Sid had extracted a near-binding promise of her never telling the brat about shinobi assassins and that his ward had made up such a ridiculous belief for her, she shrugged. "Fine, give me a moment."
"Way of the Ninja?" Questioned the white-haired and shark-toothed teen aloud, tucking his hands behind his head as he regarded his friend skeptically.
Fiona didn't hear what Black Star said in return, Sid swiped the cup out of her hands and tossed his keys at her head the moment she let herself into his apartment. "Go have fun. And try to do something other than just stand there this time."
Mildly impressed, she did have the reaction times of a jōnin kunoichi and swiping something from one was damn hard, she instead looked at the key ring she had snatched. "…seriously? That's it?"
"We don't want you walking around on your own because there are creatures in this world that eat souls, Fiona." The Three Star Meister informed her bluntly. "But now we know you're not bad in a fight, and you've cooperated with everything we've set for you. The only problem now is figuring out how to get you more range, other than just where my keys are and the Death Room."
One of these days, she was going to figure out how to physically get her hands around Natsumi's neck. The kunoichi's stubbornly lingering paranoia was proving to be more and more unwarranted, and yet Fiona never did manage to ignore that part of her composite self.
She unhooked her crystal from the man's key ring, tossing them back. "If I carry this around, that's not really much of an issue."
"Unless someone else takes hold of it." Sid countered dryly, reseating himself at his kitchen table to finish off the test marking. "Shinigami-sama has yet to figure out how to break more off without destroying the entirety of your soul."
"I would frankly not mind."
The man rolled his eyes at her. "Yeah, you've said. Fine, we'd rather not have little soul-beacons of you sitting around to tempt rotten souls into trying to eat. Who knows what a bijuu-tainted soul crystal would do to them?"
"Well… that is a little concerning."
Catching the now crystal-less keys, Sid returned them to his pocket and waved her off. "Try not to get into trouble."
Fiona gave him a rather bastardized salute as she turned around. "Sure."
(ooo000ooo)
Coliseum, Death Festival Arena
"I'm Maka Alban, it's a pleasure to meet you Miss Hanson."
"Fiona, or Sergeant Hanson, please." Eyeing her fellow if younger blonde and the angles of her face, she couldn't really tell… "You wouldn't happen to be related to Spirit Alban, would you?"
The girl's pleasant smile turned rather forced. "Unfortunately… he's my paternal genetic contributor."
"…I kicked him off Shinigami-sama's desk, and into the dirt a few times." Fiona told the girl warily, relaxing when she didn't do more than beam.
"I think you're my new favorite teacher."
"She's a teacher's aide, you teacher's pet."
"Excuse me a moment." Maka informed the older dead woman cheerfully, spinning around and hammering the book she had been reading out of into the crown of Soul's head. "SHUT UP, SOUL!"
Fiona snorted, tying her crystal soul shard to her reissued dog tags. "Been hanging around Shinigami-sama a bit much?"
"He's a really inspiring being." Chirped the pig-tailed blonde as she turned back to the older woman, checking to ensure she hadn't damaged the spine of her book on her partner's head. "I want to turn Soul into the next Death Scythe, one even better than my father. We're almost there, our last mission took us to Russia to deal with an corrupted soul named Rasputin. One more, and then we'll only need a witch soul. That's why we weren't in class lately, Sergeant Hanson."
"That's fine. Have you gotten the assignments you missed? I'm only aware of two tests you might need to make up." It did boggle the poor dead woman that absences from class were more likely to be caused by meister-weapon pairs hunting down approved targets than illness. The hoops she and Sid had to go through to figure out if a student was playing hooky or not…
"I have them. We'll make up the tests tomorrow afternoon."
"HEY! FIONA, YOU BETTER NOT BE IGNORING ME AGAIN!"
"Black Star, she's talking to a student! That's really rude…"
Sighing yet again at the preteen's impatience, the ex-Kurama kekkai genkai shot the blue haired meister a stern look. "Whenever you're ready, Star. Very rarely do any shinobi wait for a formal start to a fight."
"Oh yeah… that's right." Soul picked himself up off the ground, giving who Fiona was somewhat sure was his somewhat bipolar meister an ugly look for the abuse. "Black Star said you followed the Way of the Ninja. How does that work?"
"Watch."
She waited until Black Star was committed to his charge, then kawamari-ed out with Tsubaki.
Maka flinched when meister and demon weapon crashed into one another, then peered over to Fiona's new position with wide eyes. "How did you do that?"
"That was cool, whatever it was." Soul chipped in, toeing his friend in the head. "I want to learn."
"HELL NO!" Pushing up on Tsubaki's back to right himself, Black Star whirled on his friend. "She's teaching me how to do it the moment I kick her ass!"
"So… that means you have yet to beat her?" Snickered the demon weapon. "Not cool, Star."
"Has anyone asked Sergeant Hanson if she even wants to teach it?" Maka asked of the two of them in exasperation, hefting her book with narrow eyes when the two teenaged boys scoffed at her.
"I wouldn't mind, I like teaching." The ghost of a dead woman professed easily enough, wandering back to the kids and rather enjoying the fact she wasn't limited to a range around Sid anymore. "However, I'm not even sure if I can teach any of you this stuff."
"Well then, Black Star, you've got yourself some competition." Soul's mostly deadpan expression shifted into a sly one, cocking a rather sinister grin at his partner. "Especially since it might just be more up Maka's alley than yours, learning stuff. We're also not nearly as un-cool to lose to a dead woman."
\V/
The Death Room
"This is my son, Death the Kid." Shinigami-sama informed her the moment she got into range of the two of them, as if that wasn't brain baking.
Fiona blinked, and blinked again. "…okay."
"Charmed, Fiona Hanson." Death the Kid gave her a politely courteous little nod, returning to eye her pretty Death God paperweight. "This is a very ugly crystal. There's no symmetry at all."
Still blinking, she kept her mouth shut before she asked a very stupid question or three.
"The shell? Is even worse. It's all over the place." He poked one of the edges of said soul shell, making a face and wiping his finger off on his suit jacket. "I suppose some people just can't help having ugly souls."
She wondered if she should feel insulted or something. She didn't, but that was probably because she never really wanted to be basically slaved to a spiritual rock.
"Right, well… as for the so called 'issue', father…" Death the Kid held himself very still, then threaded a finger through the cracks in the soul crystal to poke one of the spires. It fell off, hitting the ground after rolling off Shinigami-sama's flat hand. "Consider it solved. It merely needs a certain Soul Wavelength in order to be affected, which is why your Death Scythe was unable to break it."
"Very good, Kid. Sergeant Fiona?" The Death God invited, making a wiggle-gesture to the new crystal piece. "Would you mind returning a fragment to Sid? I have an investigation I would like him on, and if you can instantly get from one shard to another… you could help us keep in contact with him when he can't call into the Death Room."
"I thought you didn't want me outside Death City?" The dead woman asked, picking up her new crystal node.
Could she use Minato's hiraishin to get from one to another? She knew, approximately, how the old version went. Powdered soul crystal might work better than blood for the whole fūinjutsu ink issue.
Maybe she could carve the seal into the crystal shard instead? There was a thought.
Carved fūinjutsu could not be that different than Minato's touch-seal trick, and she was little more than chakra in nature. It probably wouldn't work on any other surface, but… even if it didn't work then she'd have crystal powder to try ink with.
"I don't, really." Shinigami-sama readily admitted, folding the rest of her soul crystal into his cloak for safe-keeping. "Too tempting of a target if my Soul Wavelength isn't smothering yours. I'd rather not learn if the crystallized part of you is like candy to certain others. Sid would be able to keep himself and a part of you safe. So we will at least know instead of merely fear."
"Fair enough. Who's taking over Sid's classes then?"
"Well… why don't you take care of that?"
Fiona blinked again, but smiled slightly at the God of Death. "Me…? I always did like teaching…"
"Perfect. You can be our substitute teacher when needed."
Even before Natsumi, Fiona liked teaching a few of the military classes to her fellow soldiers. That wasn't really too bad of a side-job while she waited for… whatever it was to happen to finally happen.
"Alright."