Though he was firmly entrenched with the DWMA by this point, and it was by far the organization at whose hands he had received the best treatment, Mifune wasn't overly eager to take on any significant responsibilities within Shibusen.
This was evidenced by him making no effort whatsoever to remove the 'trial' prefix from his job: Trial Professor.
Currently, his duties included hanging around the gyms during the school day, teaching a few physical education courses for the Not Class, as well as helping the Eat students with their training. He didn't teach any of the meatier subjects, such as strategy or the arts of war, and, truth be told, he wasn't exactly champing at the bit to begin doing so.
Though, it seemed that his time of being a lay-about professor was finally drawing to a close, as, that very day in fact, Shinigami-sama had invited him to the monthly meeting of the Death Scythes. Besides the Death Scythes themselves, only Stein and the other Death Scythe meisters were allowed to attend. Why Lord Death thought his presence necessary, the Samurai couldn't hazard a guess, but he wasn't about to disobey instructions from a superior, even if they were nonsensical. His job was such a cushy one, after all, and he'd very much like to keep it.
He arrived at the meeting with scarcely thirty seconds to spare and took an empty seat, between Vajra Yadava and Franken Stein. Team Albarn was in Aperture for some mission or other, he remembered. Thus, there were more than half a dozen unoccupied chairs scattered about the meeting room, giving it an atmosphere of incompletion.
After the obligatory introduction, the swordsman had leaned back against his chair and then proceeded to become bored out of his mind. He'd paid no more than minimum attention to the discussions, which were largely strategical in nature, having to do with the stability of their own world, rather than their relationship with the Ouran Dimension. Lord Death droned on about disciplinary issues within the school, political and social concerns, Mifune's assignment to join Stein and Sid as occasional partner for the partnerless Death Scythes...
Wait, what was that last one again?
"... and seeing as Mifune-dono has no experience working with living weapons, I'm sure you'll all take good care of him!" Lord Death finished.
Ah, so he had heard correctly.
Shit.
"What?!" shouted Marie, Yumi, Justin, and Vajra.
"—that concludes the matters of interest," said Lord Death. "You're all dismissed."
"Shinigami-sama..." began Justin Law.
But the death-god ignored him and was speaking instead to the mad scientist. "Stein. Spirit and I are off for an afternoon on the town. Want to come?"
"Of course," replied the meister, rising and following his two friends from the room.
...leaving Mifune alone with eight Death Scythes and four meisters, all of them staring at him with some measure of distaste.
Mifune sighed.
He jerked his head towards the door, where Shinigami-sama had just disappeared.
He brought his right hand up to crank an imaginary screw in the side of his head, the universal sign for insanity in Shibusen.
Then, he raised one eyebrow in a questioning expression.
Twelve people nodded without hesitation.
Mifune sighed again, getting to his feet.
"Nice meeting you all," he said, walking out of the room.
For a moment, it seemed as though he'd be allowed to leave.
"...wait!"
Mifune kept walking, but he did slow down and glance behind him.
The dozen warriors now looked slightly guilty.
"We didn't mean to run you off," Marie told him, with an apologetic smile.
"It's fine," said Mifune rather brusquely. "I actually do need to be somewhere..." he said, hoping they'd take the hint and stop hindering his departure.
"We'll walk you there!" said Marie, dragging Azusa, Yadava, and Law behind her. "It'll give us a chance to talk."
"..." the Samurai didn't reply, merely continued walking.
"Sorry about the cold reception," Marie said, a few minutes later, as they followed the Samurai down the cobbled streets of Death City, "but we haven't always had the best results with partnerships assigned by Lord Death..."
"Stein was the last one. Can you blame us?" Vajra shuddered.
"Well, he's really not that bad," said Marie, defending her somewhat insane comrade-in-arms, "but we're always wary of new technicians. You never know who's going to end up being the next Asura."
"That's nice," said Mifune, not paying the slightest bit of attention. Marie looked rather offended at that comment, but the Samurai failed to notice, owing to the fact that he'd just spotted a familiar face in the crowd.
"Afternoon," he greeted, giving a nod to a brunette as he fell into step beside her. "How goes it?"
"Could be worse," she replied with a shrug.
The Death Scythes fell behind, not knowing what to think of this development.
The swordsman and his companion walked on for a few minutes, side by side. Upon reaching their destination, the two of them stopped to take their place amongst the parents waiting outside the local elementary school.
The Death Scythes had stopped half a block back, and were watching the two with interest.
"That's not his girlfriend, is it?" asked Vajra. "I've never seen her before."
… which just goes to show that, if you take a Witch out of the black robes and put her in normal clothing, no one will recognize her.
Though, it might also have been due to the fact that most of the Death Scythes, though not Azusa, still thought Haruhi was a guy... and the person they saw before them was most definitely wearing pink.
The bell rang. After a lag of perhaps thirty seconds, children began pouring out of the building in droves. A small number of these detached themselves from the main crowd and went over to their waiting parents, though most were headed for the school buses.
"Mifune!" called a small girl, running over and hugging her caretaker.
"Kirimi!" said the brunette, whose own child hadn't noticed her, due to her having her head buried in some sort of comic book.
"Hi, Haruhi," said the child, glancing up briefly from her book, walking over to their group.
"Do I want to know what that's about?" asked the older girl, eyeing the book with no small degree of suspicion.
"Nope," replied Kirimi cheerfully, putting it into her backpack.
Angela giggled, but not in a nice or innocent way, "Ally Warren took Kirimi's book during lunch, and tried to read it out loud to her friends to embarrass her," she confided in her father, "but after a few sentences she just stopped talking. Her eyes were still moving, so she must have kept reading... then she just dropped the book on the floor... and threw up all over her table." The Chameleon Witch was laughing at the mere memory of it.
"You know you shouldn't read stuff like that until you're older, right?" asked Mifune.
"I don't even read normal books," replied Angela, looking at her father as though he were insane, "if I start liking them, it's gonna be ones that don't make you throw up."
"Smart decision," said Mifune, giving her a gentle clap on the shoulder, causing Angela to beam.
After exchanging a few more words, the four of them turned and began to walk back towards Shibusen.
They stopped when they found a blonde woman with an eyepatch blocking their path.
"Are you two dating?" Marie asked them. She was positively green with jealousy.
"If I say 'yes,' will you be satisfied and quit following us?" asked Haruhi, who was in a bad mood that day, when it came to anyone outside her Coven.
"No, I'd say the opposite will happen," guessed Mifune.
"Then no," answered the Dragon Witch. "We're not romantically involved in any way. The four of us are merely part of the same Society."
"Dragon Witch Fujioka?" asked Justin Law, finally recognizing her.
"Death Scythe Law," returned Haruhi with a nod.
"The Dragon Witch is a girl?" Marie asked Azusa in a shocked whisper. The Crossbow nodded.
Ignoring the muttering about how surprising it was that she was female, the brunette swept past the Death Scythes. Mifune and the children followed along in her wake.
"Where are we going?" asked Marie a few minutes later, still following them.
Kirimi and Angela dashed through a portal near Shibusen's courtyard.
"We're going to the Ouran Dimension," said Mifune who, while not in a bad mood, was still antisocial as ever.
"I have no idea where you're headed," continued Haruhi.
"We'll come along," said Azusa, who, while not a stalker like Marie, was genuinely curious about the Samurai by this point.
"Suit yourselves," said Mifune. "Just be aware: this will be different than previous missions to the other dimensions."
"We've all been to Ouran before," pointed out Law.
"Not like this, you haven't," said Mifune, his mouth a grim line, stepping through the portal.
Then, they were walking down the familiar concrete hallway to the meeting-room where the Society had relocated. Since Team Albarn's reinstatement as an official team, not to mention a certain incident involving fireworks, leadership of the Time Waster's Society had fallen mainly to Tamaki Suoh, as he was the one most eager to take responsibility... if not always the one most reliable to follow through with his duties.
Angela and Kirimi ran ahead, pushing open the door and running inside. The adults followed.
After entering the room, they immediately stopped, upon seeing Excalibur brandishing his cane at them.
"—there!" said the Holy Sword, obviously finishing some statement which none of them had heard the beginning to.
Mjolnir, Law, Azusa, and Yadava moved out of the way as quickly as possible; the three Witches followed suit. Mifune, who wasn't about to be intimidated, stood his ground.
There was silence.
What was going on? The Samurai didn't know in the slightest, but controlled insanity was a daily occurrence in the Society, which he had long since grown used to.
"Mifune?" Kaoru asked the Holy Sword in disbelief. "You're saying that the Samurai is your technician?"
"Yes," answered the sentient weapon.
Mifune suppressed a snort. Whatever. He wasn't the Holy Sword's partner... but Excalibur did seem to be rather serious as he approached the swordsman.
"Walk with me," said the sentient weapon, gesturing to the hallway.
Something in the Holy Sword's eyes made Mifune pause. Perhaps this was more than a simple joke, after all.
Mifune left the room. Excalibur followed.
"I apologize for the ruse," said Excalibur, once they'd found an out of the way corridor in which to converse. "I required an excuse for why I wouldn't take a partner... and you were the closest available proxy."
Mifune raised an eyebrow. "The thousand provisions aren't deterrent enough?"
"Apparently not," replied the Holy Sword, frowning.
"Why the sudden interest in gaining you as a weapon?" wondered the Samurai, glancing to make sure no one rounded a corner and caught them unawares.
"The change of venue to Ouran, I expect," said the sentient weapon. "Everyone in Shibusen already knew I was annoying, so I didn't actually need to act annoying anymore. Here, all they'll see me as is an absurdly powerful weapon, and I can't have just anyone partnering with me."
"Seems kind of paranoid," observed Mifune, "but whatever floats your boat. You may continue to list me as your meister, if it helps."
"No," said Excalibur, shaking his head, "if you're going to be in on this, you need to understand. I told Swordson, when I'd realized I couldn't get rid of him, so it's not like it's a great secret..."
Excalibur paced back and forth for a minute or two, considering his words carefully.
"The thousand provisions," he said, eventually, "are more an excuse than they are anything else. As a sentient weapon, I'm capable of matching wavelengths with anyone. However, there are very few humans out there who can successfully match with any sentient weapon. And if they can't, the consequences are disastrous. Because, even if they can't match wavelengths with us, normal humans can still use our powers: albeit, at great cost to themselves. A cost which usually leads to them becoming unstable and trying to take over the world."
"The 'cost' being?" Mifune wanted to know.
"For myself? Sanity," said the Holy Sword, "For Ragnarok it's autonomy," he continued, going down his mental checklist, "and GLaDOS, while I don't know, I suspect it's individuality."
"Autonomy," said Mifune, thrown off-track by the second item. "So, Chrona... she gave up her autonomy to partner with Ragnarok?" he asked.
"No, that's a fluke... of a sort," replied the sentient weapon, realizing they were getting off track, but thinking that this was also a point worth discussing. "Medusa was trying to create a super-weapon by fusing a living weapon with a human."
He brandished his cane absently, like a lecturer gesturing at a blackboard, despite the fact that there was nothing but empty air before them. "If fusing a normal weapon with a human creates a living weapon, then fusing a living weapon with a human must equal a super-weapon, I suppose must have been her reasoning...
"No," Excalibur reiterated. "Chrona is able to match wavelengths with Ragnarok without any ill consequences. Our true meisters... of which Chrona is one for Ragnarok and Arthur was one for me... tend to be those who already have some experience with our price for meistership."
"King Arthur was insane?" asked Mifune.
"Well, he was widely considered to be a few straws short of a haystack, at least," agreed the Holy Sword. "He wanted to overturn the natural order: have the strong protect the weak, of all things. Hence, he was already sort of insane... at least by the standards of his own society"
Excalibur met Mifune's eyes, trying to gauge his reaction—which was no easy task, considering the Samurai rarely changed expression.
"... truth be told," the sentient weapon continued, "my guess about GLaDOS is solely based off the fact that she told me her true meister is an amnesiac, unable to recall any of her life from over a year ago."
Glancing away again, the Holy Sword moved onto his main point. "And Chrona... well, she's a doormat. Or, at least, she was for most of her life, and she knows what it's like. After Medusa's death, she seems better, of course, but she still knows what it is to lose your will to another. Hence, she is his true meister. Whether she would have been so had Medusa not forced their partnership upon them is less certain, but the end result is what counts, I suppose."
"Just to be clear," began Mifune. "You're saying I'm not a true meister for you or either of the others?"
"I didn't mean to insult—" began the Holy Sword.
"—not at all," interrupted Mifune. "It's no offence or insult whatsoever. I have no desire to lose my sanity for the sake of an unbruised ego."
Excalibur nodded in understanding.
"My personality has never been well-suited to partnership with a sentient weapon," the Samurai explained. "Or any living weapon, for that matter. I practice the infinite sword style, so using a single weapon has never been something I'd even consider... what I meant to convey is that deception could be mutually beneficial, as Lord Death is trying to force some of the Death Scythes to partner with me. Neither party is very enthusiastic about the idea... but there's not much we can do about it. He's their leader and I'm only there by his good graces."
"Then this might work well for the both of us," said Excalibur. "I'll likely still break out the song and dance routine, to ensure maximum mental scarring, but I'll try and do it when you're not around."
"Sounds good," said Mifune. "I'm going to go make sure Angela's not doing anything too dangerous. I suppose I'll see you later, Holy Sword."
"'Meister,'" returned Excalibur, giving a rather extravagant flourish of his cane, which bespoke greater enthusiasm than he'd yet displayed in their conversation. It had been awhile since he'd really let himself cut loose in the annoyance department.
In the Time Wasters Society, Sapphire and Silver both shivered. After a few hundred years of living in the same cave as the Holy Sword, you just started to develop an instinct for these sorts of things.
The two of them exchanged a dark, knowing glance, and stole out of the room, remarking on how they needed to go see a guy about a thing.
As the Samurai made his way back to find his daughter, Azusa drew her sight back to her immediate surroundings: the Time Wasters Society, where she was surrounded by three of her comrades: Marie, Justin, and Vajra.
The trio of weapons who weren't using senrigan eyes to spy on people were pretending to have a serious discussion, as a distraction and to keep people from becoming too suspicious of them.
Three sets of eyes turned towards her. "Well?" asked Law, seeing her attention focused on them.
"He is a good man, I believe," said Yumi. "But partnership of any sort will be difficult."
She didn't elaborate. After she had obtained the ability to spy on anyone within no small radius of herself, Azusa had soon learned to be discreet.
Law nodded, considering this new intelligence. Vajra and Marie exchanged a glance, looking slightly relieved and very thoughtful.
"Also," said Yumi, drawing their attention once more. "We are colleagues," she told them. "We help each other, merely on principle. If you're ever uncertain about matters of gender, well, I'm on fairly good terms with most of the Ouran Alliance. I could have asked Dragon Witch Fujioka about her pronouns, if you were too embarrassed to do so yourself. This applies to anyone from Shibusen as well, of course."
Marie looked rather embarrassed, and, for a moment, they were all silent.
"Then... Chrona's a girl, right?" asked Vajra, taking advantage of Azusa's offer.
"Yes," confirmed Yumi. "I asked her the first week after she joined."
"Knew it," muttered the Demon Fist Iron. "Fork it over, Law," she said, turning to the Guillotine.
"My god, my god..." lamented Justin Law, gazing balefully skyward, "Why have you forsaken me?"
Then, with a huge sigh, he handed Vajra five dollars.
"'My god'?" asked Marie raising an eyebrow.
"...only made that bet because Shinigami-sama himself told me Chrona was male..." Law was muttering to himself.
Azusa's expression froze. She knew that Shinigami-sama could take awhile to catch up to certain social norms, but... did he feel like he wasn't allowed to ask and had to guess?
Vajra was also disturbed by the oversight. "It's possible he was just messing with Law..." she said.
"He doesn't lie to us," said Marie, wide-eyed, shooting that idea down. She shook her head. "That means he really doesn't know."
"Should we do anything about this?" asked Vajra, looking uncomfortable. "How would we even bring it up...?"
"I believe," said Law, after a moment's consideration, "that if we inform the Kid-kun, or perhaps younger Death Scythes, of the problem, the issue will resolve itself, in due time."
They paused, envisioning the many, many scenarios which might arise from such a course of action.
Three Death Scythes nodded in agreement.
AN:
So, I'm just calling Mifune and Angela 'Father' and 'Daughter' without the 'adopted' prefix. Hope this doesn't bother anyone.
Also... Vajra.
At the end of the Soul Eater Anime, Asura threw up his weapon before he died. We never saw what became of that weapon, I don't believe, but I'd like to think they had a happy ending. What remains is to give them a human appearance and personality.
So, the weapon looked like a vajra, which isn't an English word, but sounds vaguely like it could be a feminine name to me. So I'm writing the weapon as a woman named Vajra. For her last name... well that I stole from the Yadava Dynasty.
And, according to Wikipedia, a vajra is a kind of fist iron associated with both Hinduism and Buddhism. So, I think I'm leaning towards her being a Thai woman or an Indian woman, though there are many other possibilities for ethnicity.
(09-23-18). Changed some stuff in this chapter to try and be more sensitive in terms of gender politics.
