The site showed that I had new reviews but wouldn't let me see them so for a solid three days after I posted the last chapter my face was plastered up against a metaphorical plate glass window like I KNOW ITS IN THERE LEMME SEE.

I'm glad to hear you like the multiverse stuff, WriterGreenReads. I like to give people the opportunity to learn in my fics! I also didn't know half the stuff about alternate universes until I looked it up for the express purpose of writing that chapter. Oops. Mitsuo the Universe jumper, it's the thought that counts and I'm happy to hear your positive thoughts.

The redhead practicing near Arya is M1LK T3A's OC Tessa Johnson. More on her as she shows up, and of course all proper credit to M1LK T3A.

Also what kind of overachieving bullshit is it when I look at a chapter of some 4k words and go "Hmm. Seems kinda short."

October 11th, 2020

Arya's POV:

After a quick pitstop for pizza, Rex led me to a building that soon explained why he had asked about baseball. Apparently, the quasi-batting cages that filled it were good places for DWMA students to practice their partnership, inasmuch as the actual physical act of wielding went: baseballs or tennis balls could be spat out at us, and we could practice our aim, or we could simply work on other forms of movement in areas that were designed to minimalize peer conversation and judgement.

Since Rex was the only one of us with a DWMA ID card, he was the one to sign us in, grab dibs on a cage, and register the equipment we'd be using. Well, he would if we were using equipment –as I pointed out when he stopped by the rack of gloves and helmets, we were only now learning how to rely on each other as partners, and it was probably a bad idea to get pelted with projectiles at this stage even if it was in the name of practice.

Speaking of which…

At this time of evening, there wasn't really anyone else in the line of cages except a short chick about our age, practicing some kind of swing. Her thick, curly bright orange hair was tied back away from the piercings lining her ears, and other than a brief glance over her shoulder to check the sudden noise of us coming in, she ignored us.

"So like, when we get to EAT and go on missions and stuff, how is that gonna work with you?" I asked as we meandered down to our own reserved spot a few cages away. "I mean, am I gonna carry you, are you gonna be in human form, is it okay for you to come into contact with a magnet in Weapon form, or what?"

Rex blinked as he opened the chain-link door. "Oh, um, being around magnets isn't really a problem." he said. "You could probably have a magnetic backpack and stick me to that when you're not using me? Otherwise I can just follow you in human form, I mean."

I nodded and hummed in thoughtful agreement.

The reason for my concern was quite simple, and aptly demonstrated as Rex transformed before me in a flash of bluish light: his Weapon form was not suited for easy carrying.

First off, the blade alone was at least four feet long, with another six inches or so in the handle, which meant that when Rex was standing with his point buried in the scarred concrete beneath our feet, his flat pommel was at the level of my chin. Secondly, the blade itself was broad as hell, maybe a foot across at the base and only tapering a little in the last six inches. Rex was bulky, unwieldy, and might be easier to transport when it was him walking with his own two feet, regardless of whether or not he became miraculously light in my hands as a Weapon partner was supposed to be.

I regarded my transformed partner with silent interest, putting a hand to my chin. Unlike the original kind of buster sword, which I vaguely remembered to belong to the Final Fantasy franchise, Rex didn't have any holes or slots in his gleaming black blade: like the original, though, he was more a cleaver than a sword (despite his size and length), with a thick back and tapering blade that led to a single edge. That edge gleamed a lighter grey along his entire blade, from the base all the way to the sudden, sharp diagonal at the tip of the sword, the only thing that saved it from being an oversized rectangle. His handle was bright red, and as I tentatively grabbed and lifted, felt like leather. There was no cross guard, no hilt to stop a blade from sliding off and into my wrists, but given as the rectangular base of the blade stretched for a good six inches on either side of the handle, a guard where I put my hands would've been slightly superfluous.

Rex was lighter than he looked –despite being a solid piece of metal nearly the size of me– but even so, I still needed both hands to properly lift him without feeling like he was going to bend my wrist in half, or to have any control over how his blade moved.

Humming, I flourished Rex carefully. He wasn't like any type of sword I had wielded before –back at my time in Weston, I had learned a bit on fencing, so I knew how to use a fencing sabre. Given as that was fencing, though, it was a thin twiggy toothpick compared to this weapon. I'd also learned even less on the traditional knightly sword, which while bigger was still nothing compared to this bulky monstrosity. Also, that was double-edged.

Basically, though I kept this thought to myself, the buster sword was a terrible weapon. Big as the person that wielded it, the balance would be awful and the weight would be catastrophic, even in short bouts, and you'd need to be some type of eight-foot barbarian archetype to wield it with any finesse, rather than a 5'10 teenager trying her best.

In real life, that is. As a fantasy weapon, something that could be less than its obvious weight, it was…workable. There was still the problem of balance and just full-on unwieldiness to get over, and that was something to keep in mind as we practiced, but this was something I could achieve.

Besides which, Rex's mass would mean he'd come down like a meteor if/when I got around to wielding him properly, and the sheer momentum of swinging him would probably do half my work for me, when it came to cutting through flesh, bone, and unnatural exoskeleton.

This was doable. Yeah, I could work with this.

First things first, though, I had to work out the metaphorical kinks. My latest practice with a blade was with a fencing sabre, so there would need to be some mental adjustments and some habits to unlearn. With a sabre, the idea was to hit fast and precise, to dart and jab and pick holes in both the opponent's defense and their flesh, if it was an actual duel. As my fencing master had said, the whole point of fencing was to hit without being hit, and if you got struck, you'd done something wrong. It was all about maximum efficiency of movement, with tight, small actions that accounted for timing, distance, and strength.

Not exactly feasible with a buster sword.

Okay, sure, the efficiency of movement was definitely a habit I needed to keep, but you couldn't fucking fence with something this big. It just wasn't possible. Not to mention Rex was the wrong type of blade for that kind of swordplay: single-edged and broad, not thin and edged on both sides.

Likewise, keeping the way I moved was important, bending my knees so that my center of gravity fell between my feet, maintaining my balance as I moved to attack or defend against imaginary opponets. But that, in and of itself, required adjustment, since Rex was much larger than the fencing sabre (and poker I'd practiced with after I'd left Weston) I had learned with, and also, the fact I needed both hands on his blade to control where it went meant that I couldn't take on the classical fencer poser that I had learned, one arm back as a counterweight and my body all in a neat, defensible line.

The combination of learning and unlearning was tricky, the more so because I had no guide apart from Rex's hums of acknowledgement and offered advice on his own weight and balance. Technically, I didn't know if the pose I eventually settled on was wrong, or if it would trip me up in an actual future fight. I tried to remember what moves I could as I passed his blade through the air at varying speeds, testing out how it worked before I committed to trying to use a move at attack speed, but again, most of my swordplay knowledge was from fencing, which was all about neat, economical movements that left no holes in your guard, minimizing the effect of the enemy's sword while you attempted to hit them right back.

This would definitely take some adjustment. And a tutor, possibly –I remembered Akane Hoshi had a claymore for a Weapon (one Clay Sizemore), and eventually Tsubaki (Blackstar's partner) could take on sword form as well, but no one else, to my memory, used the common sword. No one prominent, anyways. Stein could definitely use a sword –his whole title as the DWMA's most skilled meister came in large part because, as his ex-partner Spirit said, Stein could pick up any Weapon and master it instantly– but he'd always used Marie or Spirit in the series, both in the anime and manga. (Marie was a hammer, Spirit was a scythe.)

So Stein was out, not just because he didn't use a sword currently, but also because he had the most acute Soul Perception in the entire series –unless you counted Maka in the manga– and thus would definitely be able to bust me for magic-having crimes the second he laid eyes on me. Blackstar was out too, on the grounds that he was an unmitigated narcissist who would probably be so busy praising himself he wouldn't get around to actually teaching me anything –and the fact Tsubaki probably hadn't gotten that form yet, since it involved killing her homicidal brother on a mission in East Asia. Akane, maybe, since at this point he was probably busy bodyguarding Anya in the NOT class and/or investigating the Witch-induced Traitors. Anya was a princess, see, and part of the deal that allowed her to come to the DWMA mandated that she have a bodyguard.

Sword users, sword users… There was Blackstar, Akane, Mifune (but he was either independent or on a different side at this point), Crona (currently under the wicked sway of Medusa)…

Oh yeah, and Hiro, too. He'd used Excalibur for a bit, but Hiro was a pervy loser and he'd only been partners with Excalibur for like a single episode, before going right back to being the DWMA's communal gopher and whiny test dummy. I wasn't asking him for help.

Hmm. Well, they probably had a teacher for this, right? I mean the DWMA couldn't expect their students to pick up expert fighting skills merely from practicing with each other, right? Sid was a knife meister, which was almost a sword, so maybe he knew a bit –really, him and Stein were the only teachers I knew at this point, and Stein technically wasn't even hired as official staff at this point. I vaguely remembered him grumbling in the NOT! manga that he wasn't suited for teaching and that he only wanted to see autopsies, which was fair, coming from a guy that viewed everything in the world (himself included) as a potential test subject.

I brought this concern up to Rex after we'd been practicing for about two hours and he'd writhed back to normal in a flash of bluish light.

"It'd be an after-school thing." Rex said with authority as we tromped out, me a bit sweaty and sticky from all this involved work and heavy lifting. "Its why class gets out so early even though we're all technically boarders at the school, it gives us opportunity to sign up for extracurricular classes and things designed to help us out on our career paths."

"O~oh." I hummed. "So you think we should sign up for that? Like how to use a sword and stuff, since you're definitely not the type I was trained with and I'd like to, you know, avoid decapitation if and when we go hunt Kishin Eggs."

Rex laughed nervously. "You know I wouldn't let that happen." he said.

You'd be part of the problem, in that case. I thought but didn't say. Until I learned just what exactly had happened with his first partner, I was not going to throw any potentially traumatic reminders of their potential demise right in Rex's face. That was just rude.

Not to mention it was just a dick thing to say to somebody who was concerned about you.

"We can talk more on the logistics of that tomorrow in class." I said with a yawn and a stretch, popping my spine loudly. "Right now I'm gonna go home and get a shower. See you then?"

"See you then!" Rex chimed, then gave me a worried look. "So, um, you are going to sign the agreement tomorrow? I mean, you're definitely gonna join the academy?"

"Totally." I said. "Why wouldn't I?"

**Time Skip***

"So anyways, that's why I'm not sure I should go all the way through with this." I said, rocking on my heels a little from where I was gazing out the window. Ao was out sightseeing Death City with some of her friends, so for now I had the dorm room to myself, and I was making the most of it.

"Indeed." Britain hummed from the other line. "Even with your assurance of the future acceptance of magic users within the academy, the current prejudice against Witches and the like –which you would identify as regardless of your intentions– is rather worrisome."

"I figured I'd just be okay with that if I didn't use any magic." I said, absently walking across the room. That was a habit of phone calls with me –I couldn't really keep still. I had to move around. "My beef is with the fact that I can't really get any good books on the stuff I need to learn."

"You don't need to do everything yourself, you know." Britain said dryly. "Dimensional physics and time travel, was it? I can easily arrange for some lists and learning to send through to you. Research on your end is all very well and good, but there's a limit to what you can understand in only a few years, never mind a mere month or two."

"Don't I know it." I mumbled, rubbing my forehead. My head still ached, a little, from that fearsome wall of text, even after the cleansing and relaxing application of a hot shower and a soak in the dorm's sauna-sized public bath. My hair was still damp, pilled on top of my head to keep any annoying drips from rolling down my back and soaking into my combat pajamas.

"Mm. It occurs to me, given the problems you have had so far, that further research is not only recommended, but necessary. We need to know what will happen to you next, or if you attempt to use that spell again even with alterations. You said this world was an anime just as ours was –what about the one you vacated?"

"Also an anime." I said, pacing back to the desks and neatening my journal with one hand.

"Hm…"

"You think I'll keep going to different anime?" I asked nervously, and caught the rustle of a shrug.

"It may be. It may be that you shall run the gamut of all the anime you know, then branch off, as it were, to other so-called fictional realms. It may be that you shall only go through all the anime you know. It may be that you have only been misplaced into these last two because of an error in the spell formula, an error that, once corrected, shall resolve with you going home as intended. I don't know, and neither do you."

"Research?" I asked as I meandered over to the window again, idly swinging up my bare foot like I was kicking something.

"Research." he agreed. "You said you'll be able to gain the trust of this Lord Death if you pass through the NOT class and create one of these "Death Scythes," yes?"

"Yup."

"Then I recommend you focus on that. I can direct my attention towards researching your problem, as well as making the results available to you." His fingers drummed on something hard. "I do recommend you brushing up on whatever material you can, however. You don't have the time to master this knowledge in its entirety, but it can only help to have a casual or semi-casual understanding of the topics I send to you."

"Right." I said, trying and failing to sound enthused. "So you definitely think I should sign up?"

"I think that, failing that, your only other choice is to attach yourself to these so-called Witches and hope they have the proper manuscripts." Britain said. "And you'd know better than I how wise that decision is or is not."

I thought on the Witches I knew. Arachne Gorgon, cultlike mother of Arachnophobia, heretic Witch of the highest order and employer of such individuals as Giriko –who was basically brutal violence and unethical mayhem personified– and Mosquito, who was the epitome of everything dark about Monsters. Her sister Medusa Gorgon, abuser and manipulator extraordinaire, mad scientist alongside her Witch nature, proven to be more wicked than even the Kishin, who was the big bad of the whole series. Shaula Gorgon, the youngest of the three sisters, puppeteer and brainwasher of countless DWMA students, forcing some of those children to murder, malicious and with no sympathy for the value of human life or the bonds formed between other people. The Grand High Witch, Maba-sama, Queen of the Witch Order, who punished the wolfman Free for stealing her left eye by imprisoning him for so long that when he escaped 200 years later, he had forgotten his own name, and renamed himself as "Free" in celebration of his newfound liberty…even Eruka Frog and the Mizune sisters, who showed no hesitation at killing dozens of civilians despite their often comedic characterization.

"Yeah, I'll take the DWMA." I said, sweatdropping. What a complex collage of nastiness.

Sure, maybe I'd get away with working for Arachne for a little bit, but aside from the fact that she was pure manipulative evil, and that any help she gave would have about sixty different strings attached to it, and that Arachnophobia was destroyed in both the anime and the manga in a very final (albeit mutually exclusive) fashion, I did not trust my theoretical coworkers as far as I could throw them. No one else had the textbook/manuscript ompf, except for Medusa, maybe, but I wasn't letting her get within the distance of a six-foot whacking stick.

Which I would slam into her face if I had the chance. Repeatedly. Until brains oozed out.

Bitch.

But enough about Medusa, the scum of the earth. If Britain –the only current authority figure in my life that knew the entirety of my situation– said that this was a good idea, then I was going to take his word for it and go through with singing up for the DWMA. Tomorrow was Friday, the last day before we had to sign the academy agreement if we planned on staying, and the day we got our IDs and so on: tonight was my last bit of grace period.

Granted, I wasn't super stressed about signing said agreement –I was more irked over the implicit amount of time it would take for me to turn Rex into a Death Scythe and start working on the stuff I needed, if I committed to this course of action. Plus, there was a nonzero chance that even the books in the forbidden section didn't have the stuff I needed, which meant I would've wasted all those months for nothing…not to mention the fact that I had no idea where to look next, aside from the Witches.

And, well. Witches. I could kinda get why the DWMA was so generally prejudiced against them.

So I was locked in with my "join the DWMA and make a Death Scythe" plan, at least for right now. Tomorrow, I could maybe do some sniffing around to determine the exact nature of when I was in the plot. As far as I could tell from the vague hints I'd come across so far –Sid still being alive, his partner Naigus not dressing with mummylike bandages, Meme Tatane being a birdbrain with goldfish memory, it not being Halloween yet– I was somewhere in the general timeline of NOT!, but where specifically in NOT! was something I'd have to do some digging on, if only because I didn't want to be poisoned and brainwashed by Shaula or one of her Traitors during a moment of unwariness.

"In any case, as you do have access to outlets in this world, we can arrange for more regular conversations." Britain continued as I eyed the nearby desk and the outlet beneath it, which was occupied by one lamp cord. Sure, I had an outlet, but I was 90% sure that cellphones weren't really a thing, so I would need to disguise my phone when it was in the actual act of being charged. Maybe I could artfully have my apocalypse bag on top of both charger and cord as I sat at my desk pretending to do homework stuff. The downside of that plan was the fact that I'd have to stay up later than Ao, which was a squicky concept when I had to wake up at five in the morning and then climb a glorified mountain.

"Ah, right." I said, remembering. "Uh, I have to get up super early tomorrow to go to school, so we'd better wrap this up before my roommate comes back. I'll try to call you next Friday or something, yeah?"

"Of course." Britain said. "Sleep well, Miss Thompson."

"Mm-yup. Uh, you too, whichever time it is?"

He snorted. "21.00, not that that means anything, given the amount of work I have left to do."

I snickered. "Sucks to literally live the life of politics."

"Oh shut up."

"G'night Britain."

"Ta."

I hung up and slid my phone back into the pocket of my apocalypse bag, before shuffling around the room to prep the last few things before bed. Co-habituating with someone in a room before, I knew the general operating code of "be as courteous as possible," which meant turning off all the lights except one of the desk lamps and cleaning up the stuff from me that had gotten spread around over the course of the day. I also pulled the curtains securely shut, because I was paranoid like that and figured the less clues someone in the yard had about who was in the room, the better.

I'd debated on keeping my combat pajamas in this potentially-perverse atmosphere, but in the end, decided that these were what I was most comfortable in on a psychological and physical level, since the whole reason they were "combat" pajamas was the fact that both the black tank top and the old military fatigues were pieces of normal clothing that, pending some horrible disaster, I could run and fight in. My tank top wasn't really loose enough for me to squirm around so my bra was somehow exposed, and it being scandalously tight (which it wasn't) was a nonfactor when I was going to be beneath covers anyways.

Nyeh, you perverse anime.

Thankfully for my peace of mind, the setup was very familiar to my room in Black Butler, which had one very high window between the two beds and the door in the opposite wall, which was oddly so much more safe-feeling than having a window be at your back while the door was towards your front. Despite how much harder it would be to react to a threat coming from above your head or in front of your feet while lying down, it was still somehow scarier when there was no way I could lay without leaving my back exposed to a potential invader.

Eh. I'm sure there was some kind of psychological precedent for it.

I was still somewhat antsy for when Ao actually came in, since no matter how quiet she was there would probably be a burst of light and sound when she opened the door, but I had my alarm set for tomorrow and if I got lucky she'd come in either when I was barely getting to sleep or when I was already so deeply asleep it wouldn't matter.

I resolutely shoved the prickly anxious feeling about someone being in the room while I was asleep and unconscious away, and bunkered down beneath the covers as I shut my eyes.

Problem for tomorrow's me.

6.17 PM, USA Central Time