At this time, the Ouran-verse Liz, Patty, Tsubaki, and Soul had just finished filling out paperwork, and were being shown around the Ouran Alliance by an enthusiastic Mitsukuni Haninozuka.
"And here's the kitchens," he said. "They have lots of yummy snacks in here!"
Mori nodded.
"These are the living quarters," he said, a few minutes later. "Hang on, I have your keys somewhere..."
"Keys?"
"The other Soul-kun and his friends pretended to be you for a few hours. It was enough time to get your stuff packed up and moved here."
"How...?" began Tsubaki.
"Portals!" said Hani. "You should go visit GLaDOS, when you have some free time. She can explain it. Plus, she's usually willing to give souls in exchange for time served as test subjects, so it's a good way to start working towards becoming Death Scythes. I mean... unless you are already?"
"Death Scythes?" said Tsubaki. "That's not even legal..."
"Well, no," said Hani. "But we do it anyway. "Takashi and me are both Death Scythes already."
"So... we're encouraged to seek power?"
"Yep! So you probably don't have any souls yet, I'm guessing..."
"Well..." said Liz. "Actually, Patty and I each have eight souls."
"I've got twenty-nine," said Soul.
"Five," said Tsubaki.
"Not a bad start," said Hani. "I'm sure you'll fit right in. I'll introduce you to some of the wielders of our organization later. You can see if there's anyone you'd like to try working with."
"Sounds good," said Tsubaki.
It was a relatively normal day at the Time Wasters Society when they were interrupted by Maka Albarn. She opened the door and looked around, before entering and striding purposefully across the room.
Tamaki, of course, noticed immediately.
"What's this?" he said. "I thought you were taking the day off club activities, Miss Maka. Welcome! So glad you could make it!"
The blonde rolled her eyes, resisting the urge to whack the guy on the head with a textbook.
Instead, she nodded in greeting.
"Sorry, no time to chat. I was just looking for Chrona."
"Maka?" asked the meister from across the room, where she was talking with the Hitachins. Such a sight wasn't a friendship most people would have predicted, but both parties knew what it was like to have an unbreakable bond with another person, and that gave them some measure of commonality. "What is it?" asked the black-blooded meister.
"You haven't seen Ragnarok recently, have you?" asked the scythe meister. "That moron needs to die."
Chrona's expression became alarmed. "No. He and Excalibur went out to destroy something, I think. Why? He didn't do anything too awful, did he?"
"He told Kid about palindromes, and the nut hasn't slept since the night before last. He spent all last night creating mirror phrases. Since we're roommates, this means none of us have gotten to sleep, either. Black-Star's just about ready to explode, and the rest of us await only news of the traitor's location."
"'Palindromes?" asked Chrona
"Words or phrases that read the same forwards and backwards," explained Maka. "like 'race car,' or 'rats live on no evil star.' I don't think Kid's going to get bored with it anytime soon, and he refuses to train, or shut up, while he's having this much fun. So, if you see the Screaming Sword... drop us a line, would you?"
"You're not going to hurt him?"
Maka smiled innocently. "Chrona, he a centuries-old superweapon. Do you really think we could hurt Ragnarok?"
Chrona seriously thought about it. "Yes," she said.
Maka laughed. "Fine, we won't hurt him... we'll just maim him, a little—as soon as we find a way to distract Kid, that is."
"Um... Maka?" Chrona gestured to Angela, who was currently practicing using her powers by turning into the other people in the room. Currently, she looked like an exact dupilcate of Mori.
Maka smiled a smile that was laced with madness.
Angela waved, seeing that the others were looking at the two of them.
"Hello, distraction." she said. "I'll be right back."
After that, a good number of people clustered around Chrona, including Anya Hepburn and Haruhi Fujioka, who had been comparing favorite brands of instant coffee, as well as Renge Houshakuji, who didn't have anything better to do.
"Wow," said Renge, "That was the most words I've ever heard you say at once!"
"Well, Maka's, shes my—my friend." Chrona smiled shyly, feeling slightly put on the spot, not to mention nervous, without Ragnarok by her side. "She was the one who invited me to come to the DWMA."
"You must be close," observed Haruhi. "Normally, you're very shy around others."
"I owe Maka a lot," Chrona admitted. "She saved my life, and the soul of my partner, Ragnarok."
"The guy she wants to kill?" asked Kaoru.
"She doesn't want to kill him," said Chrona. "She's just annoyed. She had to deal with Kid in symmetry-mode for a whole day. Any sane person would want to commit murder."
Just then, the door opened, and Maka reappeared. She and Black-Star were frog-marching a third person between them, who was going on about how he preferred lasagna to salami, by the sound of his rambling.
"Hey, Kid, look," said Black-Star, pointing squarely at Angela and Mori, "symmetry!"
Then, Maka and her companion dropped their captive onto the floor and rushed out of the room.
For a moment, Kid just sat there, blinking at the duo in curiosity.
He then got up and walked over to the two of them, and circled around, viewing the comparison between the apparent 'twins' from from all angles before announcing:
"Chirality."
Angela blinked up at him.
"What?" she asked, though she was still imitating Mori, so her voice was an imitation of his.
"You made yourself into Morinozuka's mirror image, Angela, not his double," Kid explained. "Alone, you're chiral, but, together, you're completely symmetric. Enantiomers. Like right and left hands."
"Kid, has anyone told you lately that you're insane?" asked Tsugumi. "How could you even tell something like that...?" asked the Halberd, who tended to hang around Hani and Mori whenever they had tea parties.
He waved a hand. "By the standards of Shinigami I'm merely a charming eccentric." He turned around to meet the Halberd's eyes, then looked back to the Angela in confusion. "Where did Maka and Black-Star go?" he asked in perplexity.
Chrona shrugged. "They've probably barricaded themselves in you guys' room, by now. From what I hear, you had a fun time brainstorming last night."
Death the Kid frowned. "Last night?"
"Yeah," said Chrona. "It's Tuesday now."
Kid blinked. "No wonder they were in such a bad mood, when I tried to talk to them."
Chrona laughed. "You didn't hear them telling you it was the middle of the night?"
"I heard myself thinking about symmetry—" Kid slumped in depression. "I can't believe I did this again!"
Chrona patted his back comfortingly, "They understand, Kid; they're not mad at you. Shinigami aren't supposed to sleep, and they get that you're still getting used to not needing it anymore."
Kid wasn't listening.
"—when I'm onto something interesting, I just don't think about human sleep-patterns. I'm a worthless pile of asymmetric trash!"
"Kid, you're not trash and you know it," said Chrona. Then, a thought seemed to occur to her. "...I will have to warn Ragnarok before Maka gets ahold of him, though," she muttered to herself. "Why he thought this was a good idea, I can't even guess..."
Then absently, almost as though she had forgotten about her audience, Chrona sprouted a pair of dark feathery appendages from her shoulders, and flew off in search of her weapon.
"Heh," said Meme, from her seat near Tamaki in the airhead corner. "Black blood gives you wings! You should sell it in cans and then get sued!"
Renge shook her head, catching sight of a still miserable Death the Kid, who was pounding his fist against the floor in a fit of grief. "I know how to distract him," said Renge to the room in general.
"Hey, Kid," she said. "You're a Brony, right? Ever visited the charming land of fanfiction?"
Mifune had not been having a good week. Claiming partnership with Excalibur might have helped the weapon to avoid unwanted meisters, but it wasn't doing much to scare the Death Scythes off from partnering with him. In fact, they were even trying to be helpful by having five weapons partner with him for this latest mission, to give some measure of approximation for the infinite sword style. Much as he might have appreciated the gesture, Mifune was still missing his Samurai swords.
They'd been in Japan for the past week, investigating what Azusa referred to as 'a disturbing lack of incidents.' As it turned out, investigating an absence was a more painstaking endeavor than investigating a crime. On the bright side, he hadn't had to do much. That was something, at least.
He'd kept tabs on Angela by calling home every day, though he wasn't exactly wracked with worry as it seemed that his newest allies were, in fact, halfway-competent babysitters.
After extensive research, Azusa had decided that there might be some truth to the rumors of the masked vigilantes that some called 'superheroes' who were said to run around at night, killing Japan's pre-Kishin. And, after several nights of staking out various buildings downtown, they had finally found them.
Of course, the vigilantes weren't about to stand around and answer questions, so now they were fighting.
They'd tried to run first, but had underestimated the restraining power of Mifune's caution-tape barricade. No one was getting into or out of their battlefield until one of the sides surrendered or died.
Now, the opponents of the Samurai and the five Death Scythes weren't bad at all, in terms of fighting-abilities. There were three wielders and four weapons: the tallest of the meisters wielded a sniper-rife, the next tallest fought using a shield and sword, and the shortest was wearing body-armor and using martial arts. They were rather skilled with their weapons, and it was probably only a matter of time before they'd turned their weapons into Death Scythes.
But Mifune was a Samurai with a soul as powerful as ninety-nine normal souls.
And he had five Death Scythes as his weapon partners.
It wasn't even a contest.
And so, Mifune had been going at a nice, even pace, altering between use of the Demon Crossbow, Mirror, Hammer, Fist Iron, and Guillotine, as he wore down the opponents before him.
However, when they were about three-fourths of the way to exhaustion, by Azusa's judgment, one of the fighters' masks had come off, and the face that looked back at him was a familiar one.
"Fujioka?" asked the Samurai, pausing a moment in surprise.
He snapped out of it when the shortest one tried to land a roundhouse kick on his head.
"How do you know my name?" asked Haruhi Fujioka.
"What?" asked Mifune. "We've known each other for—"
"Mifune," reminded Vajra, resuming human form. "We're still in our own dimension."
He actually had to think about it. It took him fully ten seconds to realize what was going on.
"So..." he said, disbelievingly, "that's our Fujioka?"
"Yes," said Azusa.
"So, she's never met us," he said.
"Correct," said Tezca.
Mifune sighed theatrically. "I remember back when my life was simple: protect Angela, that was it. Now things are complicated..."
"A seven man band, including the weapons," said Justin. "She's probably not the only one we know."
The sniper rifle flashed and transformed into another masked figure. "Just how do you know us?" he asked.
They all recognized that voice.
"Oh god."
"He's here, too."
Azusa met his eyes, repressing the urge to smile, though some of the warmth bled over into her voice. "Do you believe in the concept of parallel universes?" she asked. "We are what some people call 'sliders.' Those who visit worlds that 'might have been' here and are somewhere else... though not under our own power. The whole thing is a long and complicated story that is best told in times of peace, but... if you'd like to know more, find Aperture Science and ask for GLaDOS."
"And should you ever find yourselves in need of allies," said Marie. "Shibusen is always willing to help those who fight for justice."
"We'll keep that in mind," said the Demon Sniper Rifle, whose voice sounded exactly like the Ouran Dimension's Kyoya Ohtori.
"We'll leave you to your work," said Justin. "Though I'm fairly certain you'll be running this country, inside of a year."
With that, Mifune unraveled his caution-tape web and the six members of Shibusen were on their way.
Once they were out of earshot, Mifune turned to the Death Scythes. "No one tell Hero Swordson about this," he said.
"Why?" asked Marie.
"Because if they had Kyoya Ohtori and Haruhi Fujioka, then they certainly had Tamaki Suoh... and I don't want to have to stop tormenting Hero by suggesting that he's our universe's version of the Host Club King."
"That's a good reason," agreed Marie.
Well, after that was over with, and Azusa had done some research on the DMD iterations of the Ouran Alliance [they were all wealthy human prep-school students, save for Fujioka, who was a scholarship student (also human)], the whole group headed back to the DWMA.
Upon entering the Time Wasters Society, the first thing that Mifune saw was Black-Star, wielding Soul's weapon form and ambushing the Hitachin twins, who didn't take the attack well, and started a furniture-throwing brawl, which was watched by... ah, there was Angela, over in the corner with the rest of the spectators.
"So," said Mifune, after they'd hugged in happy reunion and watched the fight for a few minutes. "Did anything interesting happen while I was gone?"
At that moment, there was a blood-curdling screech. A few seconds later, Death the Kid ran past the open doorway, still screaming, with no apparent source of danger in sight.
"Not really," said Angela, leaning against his arm, unconcerned by the sound. "Watched cartoons, mostly. You're not related to Speed Racer, are you?"
"Not so far as I know," answered the Samurai calmly, as he was also used to the theatrics of Team Albarn.
Next, the human form of Deng Dinga, one of Shibusen's Death Scythes, appeared in the doorway. The expression on his face was one of concern, but he was stopped from going after the Shinigami by a bemused Patty Thompson, who was holding his arm to prevent him from doing so.
"It's not because you're an Ax," she was explaining. "It's because you're a Rainbow."
"Yeah," agreed Mifune. "Doesn't look like anything's changed."