Chapter Three:

Mama Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys

Shock was quickly replaced by anger.

"Short!?" Maka walks towards the man in the bandana, her fear momentarily forgotten. "I'm not short! You're just freakishly tall." She had to look up at him to reiterate that point, and she frowned under her mask when she realized that she barely reached his clavicle.

"What was that Angel?" Maka growled, she could hear the smirk in his voice and she took a step back, and crossed her arms.

"You. You're Eater, aren't you?" She asked, and he nodded. What are you doing here?"

"Well, if I recall correctly, this is my wall."

"Not anymore." Maka smirked under her mask, and stood in front of her wall protectively. "This is mine."

Eater snorted, and shook his head. He was about to answer before a low buzzing filled the silence between the two, and he fished out his phone. She watched intently as the light from the screen lit up his face and she focused on his eyes. Red, they were actually red. And for some reason, with the light in his face, those eyes looked incredibly familiar, but she couldn't place them for the life of her. Eater hissed under his breath and shoved the phone back in his pocket. "Well little Angel, looks like your piece lives another day." Eater looked down at her, one snowy eyebrow raised. Maka didn't answer, just stared at him as he turned to walk away.

"You'll let me finish it right?" She called after him, and he stopped walking, turning his head over his shoulder. "You'll at least let me finish the piece before you destroy it?"

She can hear him sigh, but he gave a nod. "Sure. Finish it. Who am I to stop the way of the doodles?" Her angry retort at his completely untrue remark was about to pass by her lips when he spoke again. "Be careful getting back little Angel."

She blinked at that, her mind going a million miles an hour. He showed up randomly, insulted her height, walked away, and gave her a warning to be careful. Eater had literally caught her in the process of covering his piece, again, and he was walking away. He didn't even yell at her. Maka opened her mouth, but nothing came out except for a completely confused "What?"

"I said be careful getting home." Eater repeated himself slowly, like he was talking to a puppy. "It's dark out, sometimes dangerous. Be. Careful."

"I…uh…yeah." She blinked at him again, and he rolled his eyes and continued his walk out of the alley.

"See you around Angel."

"Doubt it." She hissed back, and turned towards her lines on the wall, slowly overtaking the radioactive semen he'd left a week before. Once she was sure he was gone, she went back to work on the wall and considered the conversation she had just had. It was not how she had ever anticipated such a meeting to go. In fact, she had never actually anticipated on meeting Eater at all. He was just some prick who covered up her flowers. A prick who apparently had been waiting for her to retaliate, judging by the fact that there wasn't any new art in this alley she hadn't already seen, and how he didn't seem to be looking for something to cover, he had just been coming to check.

And he hadn't yelled.

Maka wouldn't even pretend she was good at understanding people. Math, science, literature, language, those were what Maka understood. She was smart, very smart, but she couldn't for the life of her even begin to understand people. For the most part, people acted as she expected them too, bored glances, muffled laughter, barely concealed whispers directed at the little bookworm, but Eater made zero sense to her.

She pulled her maker back out and uncapped it, continuing the flow of lines while she thought. There were some people in life that just didn't make sense, and he might just be one of them, but still. The freaking giant hadn't even invaded her bubble, she had done that to him, and he'd seemed more interested in her stature, or lack thereof, to even worry about the fact that she was literally in the process of buffing him.

Maybe he was the weird one here.

Yeah, that had to be it. Eater had to be the weird one. And how old exactly was this guy? If she found out she had been buffing a senior freaking citizen, she was going to feel horrible. But…his eyes didn't look old, just achingly familiar, and it pissed her off that she wasn't exactly sure where she had seen them before, of if she even had seen them before. She'd remember something like that, wouldn't she? Red eyes? Even in the questionable pool of genetics that Death City seemed to produce, red eyes weren't as common as one would think, and she just fucking knew she had seen eyes like that before. But she couldn't think of a single instance where they were paired with the white hair she'd seen peeking out of that beanie.

Maka pulled her marker from the wall, and shook her head. She was thinking too much about everything. Eater was just some (possibly elderly) guy who was pretty decent at making chunks of color appear as a picture. That's all.

Eater wasn't anything else.

Just an artist like her.

Yeah, she had just been thinking too hard about it. Eater was like her. That's all. It meant he was nothing special.

She traced her lines for another hour, the picture in her head slowly encompassing the wall she was trying to liberate from the man's hold. Finally, she was too tired to continue, and the numbers on her phone told her she only had a few hours before the sun cracked across the sky and her father would get home. Yawning, she shoved all her markers into her bag, and looked up at the work she had been doing. She loved it so far, she really did. She let her shoulders relax, and she chewed the inside of her cheek. Smiling, Maka pulled up her bag, and reached around for her neon orange sticky notes. She pulled out a sharpie, and scribbled a note out on it really quick, a small smirk on her face.

There.

No one ever regrets a little insurance policy.

He literally fell asleep in a piece of toast.

Wes watched in slightly morbid fascination as his little brother's eyelids continued to droop, a little less red visible each time, until they finally stayed shut, and his head fell from his hand, and landed fast first into the piece of toast he had haphazardly covered with butter before sitting down. The eldest Evans blinked, and took a sip of his instant coffee, pondering the situation.

He knew his little brother was out later than usual last night, having rolled in well past what he usually stayed out, and woken up earlier than usual for work, as apparently "Bl'ck*St'r mes'd Tsu up t'much, an' gott' cover h'r shift." Soul had blearily, and disgustedly, told Wes when he asked why he was up. Wes' school was on their last day of finals, and he just needed to put the grades in and he'd be done for the summer. Soul still had another week before he'd be off, and between the studying, work, and unapproved extracurricular activities, his little brother might finally be starting to wear himself thin.

Soul snored into his toast, and Wes took another sip of coffee.

Or Soul could simply be going crazy. There was always the second option.

Either way, he should probably prevent his little brother's lungs further damage, and make sure he didn't drown in the butter he was incredibly close to sucking up through his nose, or even the obnoxious snoring Wes was used to hearing muffled through a wall. God help whoever would be unfortunate enough to share a bed with his little brother. Wes was about to call Soul's name when he saw the hand that had been reaching for his glass of OJ twitch, and Wes raised an eyebrow. His little brother was out. They might need to put off his horrid little habit until after school was over. Well, calling his name wasn't going to wake him up.

Wes grabbed his spoon and chucked it at his brother's head.

"Ow!" Soul flew up, toast stuck to his face, and he looked around confused, rubbing his wild, still bedridden hair. No words were spoken once his eyes registered the kitchen and he calmly pulled the toast from his face. "Please don't say anything."

"Oh, but the questions in my mind right now…"

Soul glared at him before reaching for a napkin to get the butter off of his face. "Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. I'm tired."

"Well, when you're out all hours of the night, you are bound to get tired."

"I'm usually fine." Soul yawned, and looked questioningly at his toast, before shrugging and shoving half of it in his mouth. "Special occasion is all."

"Maybe it's time to put up the cans until after finals?"

Soul gave him a grumpy face, and Wes had to keep himself from laughing at the disgruntled creature at the end of the table. "I can't."

"Why, yes you can. If you want, I can steal your paint again-"

"Fuck you Wes that shit costs money."

"So does rent, little brother."

"I gave you my half this month." Soul shrugged. "Let me have my fun."

"Fun? You fell asleep into your breakfast."

"At least it wasn't cereal."

"Soul, you need to take a break."

"I caaaaaaaaan't."

"Why not?"

"Because…I just can't okay. Angel is fucking buffing me again, and I can't let it go for too long, or she'll fucking think she won."

"Wait…she's going over what you went over because she went over what you drew?"

"Yup."

"The two of you are children."

"I don't care, she's not getting the freakin' wall."

Wes rolled his eyes and finished off what was left of his coffee, while Soul glared at the cup like it has personally wronged him and his house in some way. "Yes?"

"I don't get how you can drink that shit."

"Easily. One, don't be a bitch about coffee."

"Not a bitch."

"Little brother, you're the biggest bitch of all."

Soul sighed again and stood up from the table, shooting his brother a death glare. "See if you get the fucking discount next time."

"Awh, come on little brother-"

"Nope." Soul shook his head and pulled his beanie on over it, flattening his bangs against his face. "Hell, I might even charge you double."

"I'll send you back home."

Soul only snorted, and sent a sharp toothed smirk towards his brother. "No you won't."

"No, I won't."

The younger Evans brother laughed before grabbing his backpack and heading out the door, walking towards the coffee shop. God, Black*Star and Tsubaki both were going to owe him big for this. He fucking hated the early morning shift, everyone in and out of the shop would be stressed, pissy, in a hurry, or a fucking delightful mix of all three that made Soul just want to beat his head against the cash register and hope to God the right amount of change would come out.

Maybe Wes had a point; maybe he was a little tired. But, it wasn't exactly his fault. That fucking Angel should take some of the blame. She was the one who had kept him up half the night. Mostly, it was relief that Angel was actually female, which if nothing else would make the teasing much easier to deal with. There was something about the little celestial midget that made him…anxious. Like there was more to those big green eyes than she was letting on, and it almost freaked him out. Her eyes were something else: sharp, dangerous, and fiery, a shade of green he wasn't sure he'd ever seen created before.

And that annoyed him. Soul knew color, and she…she seemed to be above color.

Fuck he really needed to catch a few hours' sleep after he got off work.

He yawned, and passed the alleyway he'd left Angel in last night, and glanced down it, before glancing at his phone. Deciding he had enough time, and knowing Black*Star would cover for him even if he didn't, Soul changed course down the alley, down to where his wall was, and he took a look at Angel's work in the daylight. Again, he was shown her line work, each one meticulously created, ebbing and flowing from each other, making a larger picture with the small individual pieces. He wasn't sure exactly what it was supposed to be yet, but this early, he wasn't sure anyone but Angel even knew what she was putting on the wall, but he could see how freakin' perfect every single one of the lines already on the wall were.

She was in the very least impressive, he'd give her that.

A bright streak of color pulled his attention, and he found a small square of neon orange that seemed to scream at him, and he wondered if it was painted or not. Finally, his brain caught up with him and he walked over to the sticky note, which was high enough on the wall so he could see it, which meant that if it was from Angel, she'd had to have stood on her freaking toes to get it there. He pulled the note from the wall, and held it up.

Keep your fucking promise Eater. Don't touch my wall.

"Jesus, she's nagging me, and she ain't even here." He smirked to himself, and stuck the orange square back on the wall. Now, not only did he have to defend himself, and his wall, he had to stand up to written abuse. Soul swung his backpack towards him, and dug around until he found his neon blue sticky notes, and a pen. He scribbled out his own response, and slapped it over hers, before heading back down the alley, and towards the café, satisfaction chasing the lethargy away.

Your move Angel.

Maka had to do a double take.

He didn't, he totally didn't.

But when she got closer to her piece that night, the blue square of paper was completely covering her orange one, and when she brought her flashlight up to it, she could see a toned down version of the angular writing that had given her a headache when it was displayed on the wall.

Don't you mean my wall? And I said I wouldn't touch it, so I won't.

He wrote on her wall. He wrote on her wall. A smile broke across her face and she let a laugh free in the empty alley. God, what was this, Facebook? It was kind of adorable though, in a completely nerdy way. She went back towards her bag, and pulled out her sticky notes again, and held the flashlight in her mouth while she wrote a response to him. Eater was weird, she had decided that last night, but he was a nice weird, and he wrote her back with sticky notes. There was something about his weirdness that she didn't mind.

Plus, if he kept insisting that it was his wall, she almost had to respond. It wasn't his wall anymore.

They somehow manage to never see each other again.

They don't do it on purpose, but Soul never runs into the little artist again, their schedules just don't ever match up. However, that doesn't stop the girl from covering half the alley in her obnoxious orange sticky notes. They add up after a month passed, and they were starting to become the highlight to Soul's day. There would be chucks of time where Angel didn't show up, and he wouldn't get a response, just like there'd be days where he couldn't make it out there, and she'd wait for him, but there would always end up being a response. She was like a freakin' penpal, except she wasn't in a different country and she showed up to destroy his work. Which she was doing, still, but it was almost worth it to go through the conversation stuck to the wall.

Jesus Angel, when I said I wouldn't touch the wall until you were finished, I didn't realize you were painting the fucking Sistine Chapel.

Don't be a dick. You can't rush art.

I'm not rushing art; I'm rushing your freakin' crayon doodle.

I swear to God, if you don't stop dissing my markers, I'm going to beat you.

Angel, you couldn't reach my face, much less beat me.

Don't try me.

I'd love to.

Idiot.

Midget.

Hey…are we friends?

Yeah. Course.

What, that's it?

What, you want a cookie or something?

Shut up, I don't have a lot of these.

Weird wall friends you only talk to through sticky notes?

Friends in general.

Well, count me as one of them.

Well, about a week ago, he had written "Well, count me as one of them" back in response to her, however that particular sticky note had disappeared, and he couldn't see it up on the massive conversation that had grown over his wall.

However, there was a new orange one, that had no words on it, just a quick doodle of Buzz and Woody from Toy Story, and he smiled in the darkness. God, he would end up making friends with someone who wanted to paint over everything he cared about, and made him a fucking lanky cowboy to boot. (Like hell he was Buzz, Angel was the weird Alien one here, not him.) Soul smirked as he reached through his nearly empty backpack for the waning pile of sticky notes hidden at the bottom.

His summer was well under way, and he was just fucking itching to create something. However, he had given Angel his word (and in writing) that he wouldn't touch the wall until she was done, and although there were plenty of empty bricks for him to deface, he didn't really want to make anything until Angel was done. But seriously, if she wasn't done with the intricate knotting and lines on the wall soon, he might fucking lose it. Instead, he found his sticky notes, and wrote a response out for her, a small smile on his face as he stuck the note to the wall.

He wasn't sure when she had stopped being "Angel the Asshole" and instead became "Angel my Asshole Friend", but he wasn't complaining. Looking up the alley really quick, he took the sticky note that held Buzz and Woody from the wall, and slipped it into his wallet.

If she was taking souvenirs, why couldn't he?

Maka woke up to a buzzing against her face.

Her teeth rattled in her head and she lifted it off the pillow. Her phone fell off her face, and she tiredly groped for it to shut off the alarm she had set. She fell back on her bed and glanced at the smoggy night sky out her window. She wanted to get up and go back to her wall, and finish the piece, but she just wasn't feeling it right then.

She could hear her father downstairs, his obnoxiously loud laugh echoing through their home. A softer, feminine laugh followed his, and Maka growled, wrapping her pillow around her head. She didn't know if he knew she was home, or he if had just forgot to consider that. He got that way sometimes, especially when there were women involved.

It didn't matter now; she was trapped in her house. She couldn't exactly scale down her window, and going downstairs meant possibly coming to face to face with whatever woman was downstairs in her living room, and she knew what the rumors had been at school, about the "handsome guest lecture" who sometimes took some of the older students back to his place. If Maka walked down there, she might possibly have to look at a classmate, and she doesn't think she can handle that right now.

She should've left earlier, but she had been so tired after work she just wanted to sleep, and now she had trapped herself in her house with her father and his conquest of the night. Maka swallowed hard and grabbed her phone, plugging in the number she knew by heart into her phone. The ringing echoed in her room, and she waiting, breath held while the line went silent. She closed her eyes in defeat when her mother's tinny voice informed her that she "couldn't get to the phone right now" and she'd call back when she could.

Except she wouldn't.

Maka growled and tossed her phone on the foot of her bed, her mind running while her father laughed again. She rolled onto her side, and her eyes fell on the blue sticky note she had stuck to her window pane, the angular writing backlit with the streetlight out of her window. She grinned at it, and she rolled her eyes.

Stupid, giant, senior citizen.

Maka sat up again, and got off her bed, digging under it until she found an old sketch book, the one she hadn't picked up since her mom had decided she was going to "travel to clear her head", and never came back. She shoved it in her backpack, and looked towards the door. She could be silent, she could be silent and sneak past the two voices that have stopped murmuring and are probably doing other unmentionable things, but hopefully they would be so involved in each other, they wouldn't even notice her.

She walked down the stairs slowly, ignoring the obnoxious noises on the couch as she slipped out the door and inhaled the desert night air. It was warm out, the suffocating night air covering her like blanket, and she had a smile on her face as she trekked towards the wall. Maka gazed up at the sky, the few dots of stars that fought their way through the city lights and smog made her smile. This city wasn't pretty, or clean, or lovely, but it was hers.

She reached the alley in about twenty minutes, and snuck down, keeping her eyes peeled for any giant idiots. Maka couldn't find any, but she sat down across from her piece and looked up at it, tracing what she had on the wall down on her sketch pad, and trying to finish the end result she saw in her head onto paper, wanting to put it down somewhere. She worked on that for a while, holding her flashlight in her mouth as she bounced from looking at the wall, to looking at her paper. It was during one of these constant up and down trips that she noticed the blue square of paper on the wall, over the orange she had left. Grinning, she hopped up and went to read it.

Are you calling me a cowboy Angel?

She grinned, and went to lift the blue sticky note to look at her Toy Story doodle only to find that it was gone. She was confused for a second, because he must have seen it, because he mentioned the cowboy but then where-

Eater took her doodle.

Eater took her doodle!

An unbidden blush crossed her face slowly, and she shook her head. It wasn't that big of a deal, he just took her sticky note doodle. Not a big deal at all, no matter what the stupid smile on her face said to the contrary. She sat back down and dug through her backpack, and looked for her sharpie. Flashlight in her mouth, she carefully sketched out a doodle of Spike from Cowboy Bebop, and underneath it wrote: Space Cowboy. Totally different.

Maka laughed to herself, and smacked her orange sticky note over the blue. Her face still felt too warm for her own good, but she ignored that.

She didn't need to think about the blush on her face, she just needed to think about getting the wall done.

Sudden burst of inspiration in her veins, Maka dug out her markers and ripped the cap off with her teeth.

The opposite of war is creation, and she was finally ready to create.

Thank Yous:

Amongthegreats: I'm glad you like how it's going!

Queen-Of-Heros: Ah, yes. Eater and Angel are now sticky note amigos at the most.

Anon1: Oh all will be explained over time! I promise! Thank you for reading!

Twin-Lupus: Buffed by and Angel might actually end up being poor Soul's nickname for the rest of forever. Ah, yeah, Soul does have a few problems with attention deficit disorder, but I'm so glad you were able to pick up on that. THANK YOU FOR READING! I HOPE YOU LIKE IT!

Odat: YAY I'M SO GLAD IT WORKED. UGH. THANK YOU FOR YOUR HELP WITH THE ART, AND THE PLANNING, AND THE LISTENING AND THE STAYING UP LATE AND ALL THE FEEEEEEEEELS ON MY GOD DOTTY THANK YOU.

Zeeberg: Oh my God your review made me squeal! Thank you! Yes! You noticed how their art is their personality! Excellent catch my friend. Oh, he'll be driven to the brink of insanity by this little Angel before it's over, don't you even worry. I hope you like the new chapter! Thanks for the review!

Chelsea-Chee: OH MY GOD IT WAS HORRIBLE. FANDOM STILL ISN'T DONE REELING FROM IT. Ah, coffee shop Soul is more fun than I ever thought. Ah, Maka pops up randomly, I hope that's okay! Thanks for reviewing!

Absent Angel: Oh, don't worry. Drawn out is exactly what they're dealing with. Thanks for the review!

Mouers: I'm glad you like it, and I'm glad the art is coming across okay! Thanks for the review!

Pinch: Thank you! You're a mother fucking bad ass too! Graffiti is AMAZING. THANKS SO MUCH DEAR!

Guest: I'm your finals distraction! Oh my god, I'm so glad you like it! Bahaha oh don't worry. There will be these wonderful short jokes peppered in throughout. You'll have plenty of new jokes for that!

Gunning Twice: OH MY GOD GUNS I LOVED THE FANART IT WAS BEAUTIFUL AND ADORABLE AND SO PERFECT. IT LOOKED JUST LIKE IT WAS SUPPOSED TO. THANK YOU FOR THE ART, AND THANKS FOR THE REVIEWS! I'M GLAD YOU LIKE IT!

Ocha-no-deathscythe: There will be plenty of Sid and Mira, don't you worry. They're actually really, really important! Thank you for the review!

AlyCatt14: Oh genius is such a strong word! Haha thanks love!

Theformulaofpudding: I'm glad you like the concept!

Johannich: I'm so glad you like it! Enjoy!

Inu-Twins: I have no problem with Imagine Dragons haah. But Soul does. He's really not a fan of them. Thanks for the review!

Eieriann: AREN'T THE VIDEOS AWESOME!? Mira will be smacking him way, way more. THANKS FOR THE REVIEW! HOPE YOU ENJOYED!

Hope you all like it!

-Eris.