The whole time you were doodling about "I hope Arya and Rex become good friends," WriterGreenReads, I was sitting there thinking about these next few chapters and being like HONEY YOU'VE GOT A BIG STORM COMING. Also, more fanart, yay!

Anyways, the next few chapters are going to be rocky, as per the plot demands, but I promise that everything will be okay eventually. Probably. Eh, interpersonal relationships are hard. I'm sure everything will come out alright in the end. Normally I don't warn you guys about stuff like this, but I figured with the absolute shitstorm that was 2020, at this point we all need, like, some advance warning for stuff that'll make us feel bad.

January 4th, 2021

Arya's POV:

I so couldn't do this.

A month into my time at the DWMA, I was curled up inside a steaming bathtub in the communal girls' dorm showers, my mind racing. It was the first week of October, and even my upcoming birthday wasn't enough to distract me from the current situation. On the face of it, my birthday –even when it was my eighteenth birthday– paled in comparison to the issues I was dealing with. Another year come and gone really didn't matter much when I was considering, rather guiltily, ditching my partner.

I had three reasons. One, despite my lowkey desperation as I pressed me and Rex's noses to the respective grindstone, we weren't any closer to moving as that vaunted Weapon-meister unit. His blade was still heavy, and seemed to get heavier sometimes when we argued. Two, we were arguing –not furiously, not often, but we had snippy conversations sometimes, and despite my best efforts I could tell that Rex knew I was frustrated with our partnership and lack of progress. Three, and this most crucially, I could tell that all the hard work and effort in the world wasn't going to win over months and months of devoted energy. It took years, sometimes, for a team to create a Death Scythe, and I could struggle and whine all I wanted, but things just took time sometimes.

I didn't have time.

Worst of all, I felt like a heel just by thinking about jumping ship. Rex was a nice guy, and I'd consider us friends at this point, but through no fault of his own, we weren't making the progress I wanted and needed to make. I wanted to consider his feelings, I wanted to keep him as my partner, but I couldn't stand the thought of dragging out years in this world as I clawed our way to the top. The fact that getting the books I needed to make my sigil was only the middle goal of getting out of this world made me feel even more dismal. I didn't have that kind of time. I couldn't have that kind of time.

And Rex was a nice guy. He was friendly and helpful and had majorly eased my transition into the academy life, and there was definitely some kind of something about his last partner that made me think dissolving our partnership would have more emotional consequence than normal. I didn't want to do it. I didn't want to be that person.

But on the other hand, was I letting my feelings control my head? Rex was a very approachable guy: he'd find another partner eventually, if I dropped him. Arguably a better one, since I'd leave this world eventually and Rex would be left all alone in any case. Was I letting my regard for Rex hold me back? I could easily make friends with Maka, since we shared being nerds, and then either have her borrow her father's access card or borrow Soul's own when he became a Death Scythe. It was a painless exercise that required only long and sustained cozening, and it could be done in a fraction of the time it took to make Rex into a Death Scythe.

But that would mean abandoning Rex. It would mean quitting on my commitments. It would mean giving up.

I didn't want to, but the plain simple fact was that I couldn't force me and Rex to work together seamlessly, and we weren't making much progress otherwise. If we were two jigsaw pieces that just didn't quite fit together, no amount of shoving on my end would change that, and in that case, it was better for me to conserve energies and find a different puzzle piece to shack up with. No matter how it made Rex feel. No matter how much I liked him, he was a brief acquaintance of a month, and were his feelings more important to me than getting home?

I felt like a dick for saying it, but no, no they weren't. I hadn't known him for that long, and I didn't know him that much. I didn't know his family, his background, whatever weird shit had happened with his first meister –none of it. We were at the very least friendly acquaintances, but those and friendships terminated all the time. It wasn't like we were in love or something: Rex would probably get over it within half a year.

Yeah, and maybe if I repeated that enough, I'd start believing it.

I sighed, long and loud, sinking deeper into the frothy bubbles as I slumped downwards against the ceramic bath. This sucked. Rationality told me that bailing now was probably a good idea, before I got too attached, but at the same time, I hesitated. Was I giving up on this too soon? How soon was too soon? Was I being a lazy coward and backing out of our partnership just because we hadn't waved a magic wand and instantly clicked together? Was I not giving Rex enough of a chance? Was I giving Rex too much of a chance?

This was one of the things that it'd be amazing to talk over with another friend or teacher, get advice and perspective on, but given as most of my urgency came from a source I couldn't talk about, my lips were unfortunately sealed. Obviously, I couldn't talk to Rex about whether or not I should ditch him, he'd be understandably biased on the subject.

I sighed again and slumped even further downwards, dipping under the surface and letting the water close over my head, trying to think as relaxing heat soaked into my whole body.

Everything before Halloween was my grace period. This was when Not! happened, that was when none of the major players were doing or planning or starting anything. Broadly speaking, aside from planning what to do if this ended up being the manga and I had to help save Crona and then figure out an alternative way to seal the Kishin afterwards, I had no goals or things I needed to accomplish. I could kick back and relax, but I had nixed that in favor of training hard, in the hopes that I would be able to power forward alongside Rex and maybe reach EAT sometime close to the beginning of the main series' events.

I could deal with wasted effort, though. Perhaps there was still a chance that this would work out –and I wanted it to work out, for Rex's sake as well as my own. If we hadn't markedly improved by the day of the Death Festival and Shaula's uprising, I'd have to seriously consider looking for another partner. In the meantime, I'd have to try and salvage our relationship however I could.

***Time Skip***

The ride to the DWMA was awkward, as it had been for the past few days. Rex and I were in a delicate balance of trying to maintain normality and not start anything, but since we both knew that was what we were doing, it cast a heavy weight over our situation. Rex handed me my morning pastry, obviously hoping that he hadn't and wasn't going to do anything to make me groan and roll my eyes wearily again, and I took it with a brittle smile and a mechanical "thank you." We then sat together in dead silence, nibbling on our respective breakfasts, knowing that if either one of us started a conversation it was only in a desperate attempt to fill the silence and help bridge our awkwardness gap.

Uncomfortable didn't even begin to describe it.

I was annoyed with myself for letting things come to this head, but then again, at this point, this wasn't something I knew how to fix, save by shoving right through it, and since I wasn't sure I wanted to, I was left in a confusing mire of my own making. Rex knew I was having second thoughts, and I couldn't lie to him and say I wasn't, and everything was just awkward and frustrating and not something I knew how to deal with. My past relationships had always been very clear-cut: either someone liked me, tolerated me, ignored me, or loathed me, and this was in none of those categories. There was friendship and frustration on both sides of our equation, and I had no idea how to patch us back together again and leave out the mutual frustration and awkward.

We still went through our daily routine, attending classes, taking extra combat lessons after school, practicing on our own after combat lessons, but it was with the stiff sense that this was a routine that we could follow while all but ignoring each other. It didn't fix anything, and it certainly didn't help my decision whether or not to leave Rex behind. I think he knew that, too, or so I read his infrequent, nervous glances in my direction. We were both stuck in a position we didn't know how to get out of –I'd established right at the beginning that I didn't want him sycophanting to me in an oddly desperate effort to stay partners, but his normal attempts at cordial resolution weren't working here. To be fair, neither were mine, but I wasn't nearly as eager to please as Rex was.

This sucked.

It sucked and I didn't know how to fix it, and that only added to my frustrations. This was a boiling pot of emotions that was about to start an oil fire in the kitchen, and all we had on hand was water. It was maddening, because I knew if we just stopped being awkward, we could keep working together like we had at the start of our partnership. But we wouldn't stop being awkward until I stopped being silently frustrated about our lack of progress, and that just wasn't going to happen until we made progress, but we couldn't make progress while Rex felt my frustration and cringed over it. It was a vicious, self-defeating loop that I had no idea how to break out of, and canvassing my knowledge of anime tropes and human psychology didn't give me any bright ideas.

We were essentially stuck.

I didn't like being stuck.

In fact, I rather loathed it.

Still, even if there wasn't much I could do to fix it, that didn't mean I was going to stop trying.

"You wanna swing by 42 Icecream before we hit the cages?" I asked as Rex and I walked down the steps at the end of the day. "I think we deserve a frozen treat."

Despite how the question was very clearly loaded with "can we please make this better" energy, Rex perked up a little. It was hard not to, in the face of ice cream. Ice cream made everything better.

We were still mostly silent as we rode the bus over and hopped off at our usual stop, but it was a warmer silence than the morning, and I'd take it while I had it. This may only improve our awkward relationship infinestably, but if I threw enough friendly smiles and ice cream at the problem, maybe it would fix itself. A fraction of progress was still progress, and I could and would empty my wallet on dragging us through fraction by fraction until we had healed our awkward uncomfortableness and frustration. Aside from the weekly DWMA allowance, I still had the quite frankly obscene amount of money I'd bet on the cricket games back at Weston, although I'd have to find a suitably discreet location and cast a money-switching spell on it to make the 1889 British pounds actually usable tender.

In any case, despite the friction in our partnership and the looming threat of Medusa and other such undesirables, money was not one of my concerns.

"Soooo…" I said into the quiet as Rex and I strolled down the curving street near the ice cream parlor. "Uh, how long does it normally take for a partnership to really get going at the school?"

This was kinda just bulldozing right on through the awkward, but dancing around the subject when we both knew it was up in the air hadn't helped this past week or so, and I was at the end of my solution-finding rope. Talking it over hadn't helped before either, but you missed every shot you didn't take and all that. At this point, not even directly addressing the subject could make it worse.

"Oh!" Rex jumped a little, then tugged on his earring. "Uh, well…it kinda varies, I guess. Sometimes people take a while to find the right partner, sometimes they click right away."

I groaned in the back of my throat, and he flinched. Another sign our tenuous partnership was going south –back at the beginning, he'd just fidget nervously, not assume the worst.

"But like, this is normal, right?" I asked, half-reassuring him and half trying to get the answer to the question that was heaviest on my mind. "I mean, even when you hook up with a good partner, sometimes it just takes a while to get the machine going, doesn't it?"

"Definitely." Rex said with sudden conviction, making me blink. "This is –taking this long to get used to each other is normal. We were strangers a month ago. Building enough trust in our bond to the point where we'll be able to get into EAT is going to take a while. It's perfectly natural to be a little shaky and uncomfortable starting out-"

"You're from the DWMA?"

We both stopped at a hoarse voice from behind us. Too late, I realized that the tangled maze of the DWMA streets meant that someone could pop out behind you or beside you or all around you when you least expected it, if you didn't listen closely for the sound of footsteps on cobblestones. Automatically, my hand jerked down to my hip, where my Colt had been holstered these past few months, but now that I was at the DWMA and had a human Weapon tagging along with me, it had seemed like poor form to go armed –not to mention suspicious. I was regretting that a bit now, though aside from warning shots I'm not sure what I could've done –or dared to do– to another person.

"Can we help you?" Rex asked politely as he and I both turned to face the speaker, though Rex looked almost as wary as I did.

Our new conversation partner wasn't someone I recognized, though that meant precisely jack shit –it was some dude in his twenties with a nondescript face, haircut, and clothes, the sort of background nobody that'd be manning a counter or standing in a crowd during exposition shots. He seemed a little strange, though, just…standing oddly as he looked intently at Rex, with something off in his posture that I couldn't name but knew was out of whack. I could see that his left pupil was dilated hugely, too, taking up the entirety of his iris so that his eye color was anyone's guess, and as he suddenly jerked around to look at me, his right eye-

Fucking shit. His right eye had been overtaken completely, iris and pupil, by a dull maroon color, with a curving indigo blot towards the bottom, like a scorpion's stinger.

This was one of Shaula's poisoned and brainwashed Traitors.

"Did you sleep well last night?" the Traitor asked, standing woodenly as he now regarded both of us as one unit. My eyes flicked down towards his hands, and sure enough, there was a clawlike blade on the tip of his pointer finger.

"Um-" Rex began, but I interrupted him tersely.

"Rex, transform, please."

He did so almost instinctively, though Rex definitely looked like he wanted to protest or at least process what the heck was going on. Still, I was his partner: I demanded and needed him, so it was his job to fulfill that need. He could ask questions in his Weapon form as well as any other, after all, and if I felt threatened, it was his duty to defend me no matter the cost.

Rex's weight as he landed in my hands was somewhat comforting, even if he wasn't my preferred weapon right now, and I held his blade horizontally to my left, tip down towards the ground, edge facing me, ready to swing Rex like a bat if need be.

"We're NOT students." I said, remembering that that had worked for Akane in the manga. "If you want a fight, we're not gonna be much of a challenge, man."

The Traitor didn't say anything. I caught a flash and shimmer on Rex's blade, and a reflection of his face appeared on the flat metal, like it had become a mirror.

"Do you think he hears us?" Rex asked.

"He should. We're standing right here." I said, eyeing the motionless Traitor warily as he continued to stare at us without expression, standing less than ten feet away from us on our deserted side-street. "He's weird enough, I'm sure as hell not getting closer."

What I meant by that was, of course, the fact that the Traitor's finger-blade should be poisoned, probably with the same stuff that made you one of Shaula's puppets, and I was sure as shit not getting close enough to find out the hard way.

This was a bad matchup for us –sure, I might get some mobility and agility later, but for now, Rex and I didn't work together nearly enough for me to feel comfortable fighting someone else in close range. Especially not Traitors –if I remembered correctly, they were zippy little bastards, and the whole "Traitor" designation came not from them being active traitors to any particular organization, but because that was the closest translation to the "dojo destroyer" that was used in the original Japanese, meaning someone who picked fights at such places to prove their worth.

So, a faux martial artist –since the Traitors were usually brainwashed civilians– versus us. It probably wasn't a good sign that I wasn't confident that we'd win.

The rubber of my sneaker scuffed against the sunbaked cobblestones as I slid one foot back without taking my eyes away from the Traitor, making sure I wasn't going to trip up if I moved backwards. I needed room, and if worst came to worst, I wasn't afraid to run for it-

And of course he wouldn't give me that chance.

Almost as soon as I moved, the Traitor lunged forward, clawed hand coming up, and I quickly put all my weight on that back foot, pulling away as I swung the blunt edge of Rex's blade at his center mass. Martial artist or not, he'd need to dodge that one, and I couldn't afford to let him get inside my extensive guard.

The Traitor raised his left arm to block Rex's blow as there was an ugly crack of bone, sliding sideways a few inches as he dug in with his feet, and then darted in with his other hand towards me as we both gaped at him, clawed fingertip gleaming.

SHIT!

I resisted the automatic impulse to throw up a magic wall, taking several blind, risky steps backwards as I pulled out of his range and got Rex between us again.

"What the hell was that?!" I panted, continuing to retreat and futilely swipe at him as the Traitor kept lunging at us with quick, jabbing attacks.

"Why'd you break his arm?!" Rex cried to me.

"I didn't mean to-"

I grunted as the Traitor's foot slammed down into my leading one, pinning me in place as the clawed fingertip swept in again. I jerked Rex sideways, shifting to hold him vertically, and the finger-blade skidded and screeched off his metal surface. I suddenly had a brilliant idea –and only seconds to execute it– and palmed the other side of Rex's blade, shoving forward and feeling a satisfying thud of contact as Rex's flat slammed into the Traitor's face. His weight on my foot weakened, and I jerked it backwards, lowering Rex so I could see my opponent again.

Broken arm dangling and a reddening bruise on his forehead, the Traitor stared at us blankly, one eye dilated hugely and the other hidden by swirling colors. I wondered who he'd been before Shaula got her pin-pricking hands on him, and how much trouble he'd get in after this was all over. A trickle of blood suddenly started oozing down his face as we stared at each other, and for a second I thought that maybe the brainwashing had gone wrong somehow, before realizing that Rex and I had just hit him hard enough to break his nose.

"Arya…" Rex said after a moment, seeing everything that I saw. "I think he's had enough. We should let him go."

"I'd love to, but he won't let us." I replied shortly. I took a step to the side, like I was trying to break away through an alley, and the Traitor matched it. "See?"

Rex was silent.

My best bet at this point would be to either knock the Traitor out or hope someone more qualified wandered by, but as it was, I was hesitant to try and use incapacitating force, and I had never been that lucky. Just a semi-casual swing with only enough force to knock the guy off-balance –in my mind, at least– had broken his fucking arm, and I didn't dare to try to swing for his head under those circumstances. This was a normal civilian who had had the misfortune to be bodysnatched and brainwashed, killing him would make me feel sick.

And of course, again, my luck had never been so serendipitous that someone qualified would just randomly wander by right now. That was bullshit. Sure, I was trying to subtly edge backwards to the point where we came out of this deserted side-street and people actually saw us fighting, and therefore could run to a phone and call the DWMA, but I needed to actually get to that point.

My hands shook, and Rex shook with them.

"Okay, maybe we'll have to just break both his legs…" I muttered to myself, and I caught a jolt that didn't come from me.

"What?! That's horrible!" Rex gasped. "And we can't –he's not a Kishin Egg!"

"He's also not stopping, and if I crack him over the head with you, I might split his skull open!" I snapped back. "This is our best option. If his legs are broken, he can't come after us, and we can run to a phone and call for help. He can get leg casts and be fine in a few months, which he won't be if I try to knock him out with you!"

"Its not my fault I'm heavy!"

"I never said it was-" I could feel Rex getting heavier in my hands, our discord sinking his blade downwards. "Ugh, just forget about it! We need to focus on fighting him right now!"

Thank god the anime logic of this world meant that opponents would give each other long pauses to either charge up their attacks, exposit, or talk amongst each other. Otherwise I would've had a finger-blade jammed up between my ribs the second Rex started arguing back. As it was, I had time to flick my eyes anxiously around the empty street in the vain hope any witnesses would show up, before the Traitor lunged at me again, hand coming up.

I twisted Rex frantically to block the jabs and swatting attacks, edging ever backwards and desperately hoping I wouldn't trip, because that was almost certainly an automatic lose in this scenario. Even if my progress back towards the main street was measured in half-steps and inches, we were still getting closer, and sooner or later someone would notice what was going on.

Ignoring the sudden leaden weight dragging me down, I swiped Rex at the Traitor's knees, only for him to pull an anime move on me and jump up, landing on the tip of Rex's blade and pinning him to the ground.

Uh-oh.

I'd seen enough fight scenes to know where this was going, and as the Traitor moved forward to run up his blade, I tucked and dove forward, somersaulting under the Traitor's lunge as Rex's blade scraped against the ground and the Traitor's momentum carried him right past us, stepping off of Rex entirely as I rolled to my feet and whirled back to face him, heart pounding. I'd been prepared every moment for the stinging prick that would mean it was all over, and the fact that the Traitor hadn't managed to jab me in the back during my roll didn't lessen my panic in any way.

We were either outclassed or on level with this guy, and now he was between me and my proposed direction of escape.

This wasn't looking good.

"Hey! Over here!"

I heard the sound of running footsteps, and even though the Traitor's expression didn't change any, he clearly heard them too. I straightened up as he bent his legs and jumped, bracing against several walls as he leapfrogged his way up to the roofs surrounding us, and then with a scamper of feet on tiles, was gone.

Turning towards the sound of people, I saw several students I vaguely recognized from the hallways of the DWMA rushing towards us. They stopped when they realized the Traitor was gone, looking towards us with recognition and vague concern as I opened my hands and Rex twisted back into human existence.

"We got a call about a Traitor fight in this area." the apparent leader announced, panting from their rapid run. "You guys okay?"

"Yeah." I said, flexing my hands a little to get rid of the after-fight adrenaline tingles, tensing and relaxing various muscles as I assessed my lack of damage. The Traitor probably hadn't even bruised my foot when he stamped down on it, and I'd managed to avoid getting pricked. "We're both fine."

The look on Rex's face seemed to indicate he disagreed with me.

***Time Skip***

We were still arguing on the Deathbus 42 as it carted us back to our respective dorms –thankfully, using it at this time of day meant that we were basically the only ones on the bus, so no one was there to hear our fight.

"I can't believe you wanted to break his legs!" Rex said, looking snippier than I had ever seen him.

"Did you have a better idea?" I shot back, throwing up one hand in exasperation. "Look, I didn't like it either, but obviously I'm not good enough at using your weapon form to have risked knocking him out. It was that or let him walk right over us!"

"Maybe he didn't want to." Rex pointed out. "Maybe he wanted help or something, and you freaked him out when you had me transform!"

"Oh, yeah, and the Witchy eyeball didn't mean anything." I sneered, tugging at the skin under my own eye with one finger in demonstration. "Or the fact that he ignored a fucking broken arm! He called us out for being DWMA students, he wouldn't let us try to escape, and he brushed off injuries no normal person would! He was obviously one of those Traitor guys they put up posters for in school. You know, the ones that say they're highly dangerous and we should report 'em or knock 'em out, on account of being under Witch mind control?"

"Then he was a victim!"

"And I wasn't going to let him victimize us!"

Rex made a frustrated sound, glaring at me. "You don't have to attack everything you see as a threat!" he snapped.

"What's that supposed to mean-"

Metal screeched as the whole bus lurched forward, the driver breaking so suddenly that the both of us, who were holding onto overhead straps and standing, stumbled and nearly fell as our satchels, forgotten on the ground, slid forward several feet.

"Girls' dorm!" the driver announced far too loudly, in the sense of please stop arguing and get off my bus you fucking lunatics.

I growled out a sigh, reaching down and fishing under the seats for my misplaced satchel.

"Look, Rex," I said as I stood up, slinging mine over my shoulder and handing his back to him by the strap. "We'll talk about this later. We're both angry right now and arguing with each other is just going to make it worse. For now, let's just go home and think on things so we can try to salvage our partnership tomorrow."

The sight of his stricken expression filled me with less guilt than it should have, but I was angry right now, angry enough that I'd have liked to slam the bus doors on my way out onto the pavement, but of course that was something beyond my control.

The bus pulled away with another hiss and screech of brakes, and I stalked angrily across the inner courtyard of the dorm, slamming the large front door behind me, at least, and stomping up the steps in the kind of irritable bad temper that was all the worse for having no one to be specifically angry at. Rex? He'd made some valid points. Me? I'd done what I had to.

My roommate training was too strong for me to slam our door too, which was good, since Ao was drowsing on top of her bed with a magazine laid out before her. I was then left to throw myself into the chair for my writing desk and fume, plonking my bookbag satchel down beside my chair and seething aimlessly. I wanted to go out and hit things at the batting cages, but that would just make me feel worse, because either I'd have to go with Rex and our shared resentment would ruin any attempt at catharsis, or I'd go by myself and feel even worse for doing something that was essentially behind his back.

Gah. This sucked.

Maybe I'd could ask the school psychologist what to do tomorrow…I mean, interpersonal relationships was something he'd know about, right? Maybe he could tell me how to fix this mess. I reached down and under the flap of my bookbag to grab my journal and make a note of it, only to freeze.

My journal wasn't in my bag.

Heedless of waking Ao up, I yanked the satchel up into my lap and violently ripped the flap open, staring at the contents wordlessly as my heart fell all the way down through my feet. Papers, folders, a familiar pencil case, but no journal. There was a glasses case, and what looked like a cleaning kit, and a storage clip of the red barrettes that Rex used to pin back that one side of his bangs.

This wasn't my satchel.

Our bags must've gotten switched on the bus. Rex had my satchel now.

Fucking shit.

5.28 PM, USA Central Time