Sid's death is one with very little narrative tension unless you read Not! before the main series, WriterGreenReads, because in the main series he's introduced AFTER he died, so we only see him alive through a few errant flashbacks. Arya's thus in the "Yeah…he'll be fine." category, but of course she can't just SAY that.
Also I have Arya and Rex killsteal from Tsugumi and gang because A) after inventing over a 100 minor two-line OCs and almost as many arc-centric Kishin OCs, creating even one more is far too much effort, B) Tsugumi and her partners don't ever apply to EAT to my knowledge and thus never use the soul, and C) both of Shaula's sisters have cheated death via their animal forms at least once, and it seems sketchy that one member of the family can't do what the rest do.
January 18th, 2021
Arya's POV:
"Ahaha~! Silly meisters and you Weapons, always so sacrificial over each other." Shaula sneered, lifting Rex up into the air a little with a twitch of her braid. I immediately redirected the flow of my magic, channeling it desperately into Rex's body as healing energy. It wasn't as good as a sigil or as much as it'd be if I actually touched him, but it should help him last long enough for me to achieve both.
"We're not…exactly…" I managed to say, numb.
Why had Rex taken that shot for me? He could've just tackled me out of the way or something –he could've just fucking let me die, as another Witch!
"Hmm? Oh, of course." Shaula's sneer widened as she pulled Rex to the side, so I could see both his face and hers at the same time as more foam bubbled over his chin. "This one's defective, isn't he? You don't want him back. Poor little buster sword."
What?!
"What?!" I blurted. Rex's eyes twitched over to me, and he tried to say something, but Shaula's venom was paralytic –as well I knew from Sid's death– and Rex could barely move his lips. His expression was agonized.
Shaula cackled as she saw the dumbfounded shock on my face as my eyes flicked between her and him, and Rex's tortured expression.
"You don't know!" she gasped. "Oh, this is too delightful."
"How the fuck would you even know?" I said, trying to play for time as I grabbed my Colt and pulled it out. It was a fair question, though –she was a Witch, and certainly not privy to DWMA gossip or teacher records. "This's about his first partner, isn't it?"
"His first, his third, and all the dozen after." Shaula said with a lick of her lips as I blinked and actually took a step back.
"What…?"
"Why, it's the talk of the whole school, child. Rex Rayner, the unlucky buster sword. He can never find a true partner, and rumor has it that every partner he finds is cursed to never, ever succeed in life. Did no one ever tell you?"
"I don't listen to gossip." I said numbly. This all fit too horribly into place –Rex's desperation to do whatever it took to please me during our first few days, the way people looked at me, at us, and whispered, the relish on some people's faces when they saw Rex with meister competition that was now no longer worth competing with, the concern from the teachers who didn't care about stupid rumors of unluckiness but did care about Rex's mental well-being; the concern from Sid on the first day as he saw Rex partnering with someone too fast, knowing that such bonds were fragile and if Rex fucked it up the rumors would only get worse; the way Rex was desperate for me to just stay his partner officially even when he knew I could kill him for it later…
Everything. Everything finally fit into a pattern.
I'd just been misled by the fact that Rex only mentioned his one partner, presumably his first partner.
Fuck it. Revelations later, fight now.
I twitched the fingers of my free hand as another wall appeared between Shaula and Rex, slicing right through her braid like a guillotine as she shrieked and staggered back. Rex collapsed, and before I did anything else I knelt by him and yanked out the stinger, then slapped my hand directly over the bloody spot on his shirt and conjured the strongest healing glyph I knew, layering it with as much power as I could and sealing it with a twist of will before Shaula recovered. I wasn't sure what the hell her venom actually did, since Sid had gotten his head crushed less than five minutes after he was poisoned, but anything that made you foam at the mouth was bad by definition –not to mention the fact that her stinger had stabbed Rex right in the chest. He needed help.
I also needed help, though, as Shaula recovered and roared with rage, slamming her hand out as intricate red sigils appeared and swarmed around her in the air, lighting up before spitting a volley of blackish projectiles at us. I conjured another of my magic walls for a shield and ran through the spells I actually remembered how to do, very few of which were combat-useful. I'd memorized sigils to ensure levitation in small objects and create a thin coating of frost, and that was it. I could always just shoot her, but I only had five bullets in my gun, and reloading with the shells in my pockets would take a few moments.
Not to mention I could only reasonably put so many bullets in my pockets.
Still, it was my only reasonable method of counterattack right now, so I pulled the hammer back and eyed Shaula as her barrage of magic missiles came to a halt. She'd probably try something that involved going around my shield, and so as her sigils faded out I dropped the magic wall entirely and pulled up my gun.
Blam!
Pull hammer back.
Blam!
Pull hammer back.
Blam!
Pull hammer back.
Blam!
Pull hammer back.
Blam!
Pull hammer back.
Reload.
Shaula's prehensile braid twitched around frantically as I shot, blocking each of my bullets as she took a step backwards, shock flicking across her face. It clearly hurt her, from the subtle wince as she took each bullet with her wounded –tail? braid? but even so, I wasn't doing any actual damage. Still, a Shaula that was wincing and dodging was a Shaula that wasn't attacking us, and for right now, I'd take that.
Problem was that I couldn't take that forever, since I had maybe two and a half reloads in my pockets.
I pulled the wall back up as I ran out of bullets, hastily starting to reload. "Rex, you with me?" I asked, and heard a faint cough. Well, coughing was better than nothing, since it implied lung-clearing movement, which also implied that Rex was able to move, at least a little, which meant my healing spell was working.
"A Witch who relies on mundane weaponry and a half-dead useless Weapon is no Witch at all." Shaula sneered, drawing herself up to her full height –not that that meant much– as her eyes began to glow again. I wasn't sure what that meant, exactly, but it couldn't be good. "I'll crush the both of you. I'll shred you into pieces!"
"Mm-hm." I said, slamming the last of my bullets home and snapping the Colt shut. I might only be able to reliably summon my magic walls, but they were surprisingly versatile, and much better than nothing, or nothing-with-a-few-bullets. I could, maybe, find a way to swing this.
The stunted end of Shaula's braid plunged into the ground, and huge purple scorpion stingers haloed in red burst out of the concrete around us. My magic wall twisted and curved to form a bubble as those tails began to rain blows down upon the both of us –at this point, I was playing for time in every sense. Time to find an opening, time for some other, more qualified DWMA teams to find us, time for Rex to recover, time to think of a fucking plan.
Turning my back on Shaula was stupid, but with my eyes open, I'd be able to tell when my magic walls started to crack, and form new ones underneath them.
Rex was ghastly pale, but he was breathing normally, and even managed to lift an arm to wipe the foam off of his chin.
"Arya…"
"Can you transform?" I asked, holstering my gun again, and watched his eyes widen.
"But we can't- when we fight…" he gasped and I covered my face with one hand to hide my scowl. This was the exact same fucking scenario that I'd wanted to avoid –the one where we'd have an explosive argument that was resolved by a life-threatening event and all the secrets would come gushing out. Anime tropes demanded at this point that I encourage him with some bullshit about how I totally forgave him for misleading me and how we could totally do this together with our newly strengthened bond of friendship, but I was in no mood to mouth anime lines through gritted teeth right now.
"You took a bullet for me." I said, poking his chest and sending an extra jolt of healing energy through him as a bit of color returned to Rex's face. "Or close enough, anyways. If that doesn't make you a good enough partner, then what does?"
"Only 'good enough'?" Shaula shrieked from beyond my shields and the thrashing of her magic scorpion tails. "Inferior to the last, I see! She'd be better off grabbing a random student from the street!"
"Oh shut the fuck up with your psychoanalyst bullshit!" I snapped over my shoulder. "You telling us this because you want to see us improve and reach our full potential or something?! Choke on your own Kool-aid and die, bitch!"
Shaula roared as the frantic beating of the scorpion tails increased, and I felt my shield shudder lightly under the pressure. We were running out of time.
I spread my hand more over Rex's chest and tried to force vitality into him, and after a few seconds he grabbed my shoulder and let me help him sit up.
"Look, I hate to be putting this much pressure on ya, but can you transform now?" I asked, eyeing my shield worriedly and trying to split my power between that and Rex as economically as I could.
"We can't beat her." he gasped. "W-we're not strong enough."
Fucking anime tropes.
"Ugh." I groaned. "Alright, so there was blackmail and coercion at the start of our partnership! Alright, so we started off on the wrong foot! But you are my partner now, Rex! I've accepted it –no, I've decided it! We're partners! It's official! So unless you want your partner to die, you'll transform and help me kill her, now!"
"That's her desperation talking~" Shaula hissed, and jerked to the side as I cast a shield horizontally at her head, trying to cut her down.
"Oh, so it's weird for me to rely on my partner? My Weapon? Got something to say about how we do things at the DWMA, bitch? I know your skank ass was offering a whole lot of opinions on that earlier with those other girls! Or are partnerships only lame when someone's trying to unbrainwash one of your pawns!?" I glanced down at the Weapon in my arms. "REX!"
We made eye contact, and he swallowed –then writhed out of existence as I wrapped my hands around the familiar grip of his handle.
Oh…this was different. Rex felt lighter than he'd ever felt before, and even as I stretched and pulled at my shields to let me stand up, I marveled at it. The sudden ease with which we moved was incredible –I couldn't describe the difference, except it was like Rex had been dragging about fifty feet of chains behind him that I'd never noticed and they were suddenly gone. I understood so much more about how meister-Weapon teams were supposed to properly work at this moment, understood how we'd never actually even come close to it before –but now, at last, we fit.
Made sense, I guess. We both had a plethora of reasons to want Shaula dead right now, and we recognized each other's wills as a true Weapon-meister team should.
I shoved my walls out and expanded them, slamming the scorpion tails to the side along a path from me to Shaula as I unholstered my gun again and shot. One-handed, I could only shoot the one bullet –my Colt was the true historic model that you needed pull the hammer back between each shot– but with Shaula's hair rooted to the ground, she could either die, or yank up her hair and presumably stop summoning all these tails.
Shaula chose the second option, uprooting her braid as the other tails all withered away. We couldn't afford to give her time to choose another spell, so I was shoving my Colt back almost as soon as I shot and running for her, cocking Rex back for a swing.
This was quite honestly incredible. Wielding Rex was almost effortless –he barely weighed anything to me, but when Shaula tried to catch him with her braid of hair, Rex sliced off another portion as he came down like a cleaver. Shaula screamed, and was reduced to desperately blocking us with magic as I sliced at her, using each hit or miss as a rebound for my next swing. Rex gouged into the concrete like butter and shredded bits of Shaula's fuku-esque purple dress, and if not for the glow of magic around her arms, we'd have probably broken them long ago.
"Scorpion Scissors!" Shaula cried, crossing her arms and flinging them outwards as two shining red constructs of light came up, snapping down at us. I didn't back away, summoning my own magic as the bladed tails skittered off my magic walls and faded away.
"Kuh-!" Shaula hissed. "Why would you, a Witch, side with these scum!? You'd kill your own sisters, and for what! For measly scraps of power that the Grim Reaper deals you?!"
Ah, we'd reached the backed-into-a-corner-bargaining stage of a boss fight. Great.
"With your family history, that's rich." I managed to shoot back, ducking under a wild swing from her fist and bringing Rex around as she jumped back. "Ain't you Arachne's little sister?"
"You-"
Shaula extended once too often as I swiped Rex down, and she screamed, falling to her knees and clutching at the stump of her wrist as blood poured down her arm. I swept Rex up from the ground, and Shaula gurgled weakly as his point rammed straight through her chest and out through her back. Our eyes locked, face to face from where she kneeled on the ground and I bent over her, and Shaula managed one last sneering smile.
"Enjoy your power while you have it, Witch." she choked. "The DWMA will find you sooner or later, and they'll burn you alive."
"Nice foreshadowing." I said, and yanked Rex out. "I'll keep it in mind."
Shaula's form darkened, turning to a cutout black silhouette, before she vanished entirely in a burst of magenta light, leaving a single soul floating in the air. It was about the size of an apple, maybe a bit smaller, and glowing an amethyst-colored purple that got lighter towards the center. The waving, off-center tail at the top was curved and hooked, a bit like a scorpion's tail, and there were two rounded protrusions on either side, curving down a bit like scorpion claws.
"Is she dead?" Rex asked from my hand. Somewhat chillingly –from my perspective, at least– his blade wasn't even bloody, except for a streak where we'd taken off her hand. For lack of anything more scientific, I leaned over and poked the soul –it felt smooth and soft, a bit like the bubble it resembled, and slightly warm.
"Should be." I answered. "This is definitely a Witch's soul, and we definitely did stab her. We should probably take it in to be examined, but yeah, I'd say we killed our Witch."
"Our…?"
I brought Rex up to look into his blade as he obligingly appeared on the reflection. "Dude, I wasn't talking desperation back there. For better or worse, I think we'll be stuck together for a while, so we might as well make ourselves useful while we do it. We just killed a fucking Witch –I think they'll let us into EAT now, if we push it."
Rex looked stunned.
"We're also going to have ourselves a nice, friendly, honest chat with each other later today, or tomorrow at the very latest." I said, making his expression drop like a stone. "I'm not gonna take Shaula's word for what's what, but I'm also fifty years past tired of all the mystery around you and your last partner…s. So, you and me are going to have a talk full of healthy and reciprocal communication, like the effective partners we are, after we finish with cleanup. How's your chest, by the way?"
"Sore." Rex said, rubbing it with a rueful expression. He looked down and pulled his shirt away from his chest, which was very odd to watch from the other side of the reflection on a blade. "There's only a red mark left, though. How'd you do that?"
"Stuffed you full of magic." I said, watching him look nervous again. "I don't really know that many healing spells, so the best I can do is shove a bucketload of magic into you with the intent to heal, and let it do its thing. Wastes a lot of power, but it was better than letting you bleed out or die."
"Yeah." Rex rubbed his chest again, and I let him go as he flashed back into human shape and tentatively grabbed Shaula's soul. "So…do I eat it now?"
"I wouldn't." I said, cupping my chin. "Its supposed to be saved for last for a reason, and we do actually gotta confirm that it is her soul. We can reserve it for you, in any case, for after we get our 99 Kishin."
I grinned, and lightly elbowed his side.
"Even if we're doing this whole thing all bass-ackwards, getting a Witch's soul in NOT before we even touch the Kishin Eggs."
Rex smiled back at me.
***Time Skip***
Cleanup, of course, took ages. There was all the people Shaula and the Traitors had brainwashed, all the damage they'd done, all the destruction of property to record and half-heartedly fix before the contractors showed up, and all the people who'd been injured to take to the hospital.
Then there was the DWMA stuff, the debriefing that Naigus gave me and Rex (thankfully after I reminded him not to say anything about his healing or my use of magic in the fight) about our encounter with Shaula, the confirmation that we actually had killed Shaula, the reservation of her soul for after we finishing killing our way through Kishin Eggs, the statement that we wanted to go to EAT, the reminder that we were midsemester, and then puppy eyes from both me and Rex and some rather impassioned begging, and then a reluctant meeting with some of the other faculty, and the promise of several practical tests before maybe we'd be advanced to EAT.
With all that, it was full dark by the time Rex and I were trudging back down the steps, and even then, we still had our little talk to start. I dragged him off into the parking lot for the student bikes and whatnot, which was private enough that we wouldn't be overhead, and snagged two cans of soda from the vending machine before parking myself on the stone wall around the small lot. After a moment of hesitation, Rex sat next to me, and I handed him his. He didn't seem inclined to touch it, but it'd have been unspeakably rude to have grabbed a drink for myself and then offered him nothing.
"So," I began after a long moment of silence waiting for him to start instead, snapping open my can of soda. "Over a dozen meisters, huh?"
Rex opened his mouth, then closed it again. He nodded, ever so slightly.
"What's the deal there?"
"Usually, it was sorta the same thing like with you." he explained, making me wince. "B-before I could fully transform, well…no one really wants to team up that early on."
I nodded in agreement with that estimation, before raising the can to my mouth and taking a sip.
"And after I figured it out," Rex continued, looking at his hands in his lap. "-well, you know. Not many people are even willing to try to learn to fight with a weapon almost as big as they are. And since your Soul Wavelengths need to be at least mostly in tune for a Weapon to feel light…"
"You felt as heavy as you looked." I said, lowering my soda.
"Yeah. S-so most of the people coming through the NOT class barely wanted to deal with me. And when I did pick up a few meisters, ones that actually wanted to try things out with me…it didn't go well."
"Define not going well." I said, idly flicking the metal tab on the top of my can.
Rex heaved a huge, mournful sigh. "My first meister tried, he really did, but…when we started trying out for more serious stuff, seeing if we could move up into EAT…he got freaked out. I think he realized how much work being an EAT student is, how much effort he was going to have to put into his dream of being a hero. I think it might not have been totally conscious, but I'm fairly sure he might've come to the DWMA just so he could reap the benefits of the job, y'know?"
"Wine, women, and song." I commented wryly. Rex laughed a little, sheepishly, and rubbed the back of his neck.
"M-maybe. But I wanted to stay here, and I tried picking up other partners in the NOT class, since I obviously didn't qualify for EAT on my own. I was with my first partner for over a year, and we were both friends with my second one, but after a while…looking at it in hindsight, I think I put too much pressure on them. I was still moping after my first partner, and I was comparing him to them constantly, and I was always trying to get them to do more, push harder. Eventually, after about six months, our Soul Wavelengths fell out of line, and we started arguing pretty much constantly, and avoided each other whenever we could. Eventually we realized our partnership wasn't working out and we just…stopped."
"Ouch." I commented. "On both ends."
"Yeah. I was only fifteen, so I didn't really understand the situation quite as well as I do now, but I definitely didn't want another partner I actually knew. A few meisters in the new NOT crop wanted me because my Weapon form looked cool, and so I thought a fresh start was the best way to go."
"It was not?"
"It was not." Rex confirmed glumly. "Those partnerships barely lasted a month each. My cousin actually volunteered to be my meister for a while –he didn't inherit the Weapon genes like I did but he still came to the DWMA– and that was f-fine, until I realized…we didn't do anything. I didn't come to the DWMA to just be someone's partner, I wanted to help people. But even though my cousin didn't even think of abandoning me once, he was awful at fighting and he never even tried to advance or improve either one of us."
"So you dropped his ass like a hot coal." I guessed, looking into the darkness inside of my can to judge how much was left before taking another drink.
"Maybe not so violently…" Rex mumbled. "But eventually, yeah. I-I told him I was happy he cared, but I didn't want a pity-partner, and I wanted someone who could fight with me. He understood, and we broke up our partnership. I tried finding a new meister, but…word got around. I was the cursed buster sword that nobody wanted, and anybody who picked me up was doomed to failure. I kept coming to the NOT classes and learning as much as I could, and I kept trying in the partnership games, and sometimes I'd get lucky and someone'd try me out for a few weeks, but it always failed and I always ended up alone. By the time you came around, I was desperate."
"Desperate enough to blackmail a Witch and not tell Lord Death about her infiltrating the school." I said wryly, leaning back to take another sip of my soda as I braced myself with one hand on the low stone wall.
Rex flinched.
"Y-yeah…that reminds me, why are you here again?" he asked bravely.
I considered my options for that one, slowly tapping a finger against my soda as the nearly-hollow can echoed faintly with each tap.
"Well, healthy communication, healthy relationship." I said after a moment. "I'm not here to bring down the school from within or anything like that, I can assure you."
Rex's tense shoulders eased a little.
"Actually, if I'm gonna be brutally honest here, I'm not at the DWMA because I want to do anything to anyone. I'm here for a book. Several books, actually."
"A book?" Rex blinked.
"A high-level, super restricted, Level 4 book." I said ponderously, and moved my hand over to pat it onto his knee. "Level 4 being open only to Death Scythes and select high-ranking meisters. You see where I'm going with this?"
"You want to turn me into a Death Scythe so you can get…a book." Rex said slowly, blinking again.
"Well it's not like I can make myself into a Death Scythe. And who fucking knows what "select meisters" means, since the instructor's tier is one level below Level 4."
"Um, not that I really want to encourage you to do this, b-but wouldn't it be easier to just steal the book you want, instead of going through all the effort of creating a Death Scythe?" Rex said nervously. "Now that you have access to the library, I mean."
"Uh-uh." I shook my head. "Not unless I somehow steal the whole level, and I can guarantee you I have no idea how that would work. See, Rex, I don't know which book or books I need are up there, only that they are. I need to go and look myself –or failing that, someone to go and look for me– before I even think of taking them, legally or otherwise. That's why I need you for this, and also why I certainly don't plan on breaking any rules or doing anything diabolical."
"What do you want with the books?" Rex asked after a moment, frowning slightly. Soothed he may be by my explanation, but he was still a student at the DWMA, and he wasn't about to take evil, or potential seeds for evil, lightly.
"Nothing that affects anyone that isn't me." I said, waving him off. "It's some esoteric stuff so I can fix a mistake I made a while back, a mistake that's honestly going to fuck up my whole life if I let it go on for much longer. Nothing more. Okay?"
"Promise?"
"Promise."
I then smirked and held up my free hand, fingers curled into a fist and pinky extended. "I'll even pinky-swear on it if you want."
Rex huffed and looked away with a faint smile, but at least he didn't seem frightened anymore.
"So," I said, draining my can in one last go before continuing. "We've got a lot on our plates tomorrow, huh? Combat tests, packing up at our dorms –cause I don't know about you, but I definitely want to live in an apartment closer to the school– and preparing for the EAT class. We should probably get going."
Rex kept his unopened can of soda with him as we both stood up, meandering over to the bus stop at the other side of the base of the stairs.
"You're gonna have to give my book back eventually, too."
He flinched.
"I know…" Rex mumbled, rubbing the back of his neck. "I just…give me a little time? You're still a Witch."
I rolled my eyes a little, but had to concede that point.
"I'll want it back by the time I've made you a Death Scythe, and not one day later." I said. "Keep it after that, and I will come after you."
"F-fair enough." Rex said.
We stood together in silence, waiting for the bus as the stars twinkled faintly and the eternally-crescent moon laughed overhead.
11.16 AM, USA Central Time