Arya is having character progress right now, WriterGreenReads, which means she must suffer. And I am in excellent health, Ksfb1996! I've gotten my COVID shots and everything. I also finished the last extra fic I was working on for an art trade, so updates should be coming (after this chunk) fairly regularly, Mitsuo the Universe jumper.
Also, (I think I mentioned this earlier but whatever) I'm reading a slew of how-to-write books due to wanting some more professional and diverse input before I really throw myself into writing my original works, and it is…unexpectedly frustrating. APPARENTLY, the many years I've put into writing on this site and the subsequent trial, error, and experience I've gained from it put me several cuts above the people who these books were designed for. Out of the fifteen books I've read so far, I've only taken notes on five, and some of those notes are only a few sentences long…but I don't KNOW if the book is useless until I've read through the whole thing. Its rather annoying, but I suppose that's what I get for seeing a bunch of writing books on my old community college's Free Books Cart and then just absolutely going hog wild dragging them back to my car. Filled my mostly-empty backpack and two extra plastic shopping bags I borrowed from my student support group and I regret NOTHING.
Well, I regret that a number of those books cover stuff that I already actually know, but that wasn't exactly within my power to control, or even really check all that well. With 30-ish books really the best you can do is skim the back covers and some pages to get a sense of what they're about.
May 18th, 2021
Arya's POV:
Rex and I were both first-time apartment renters, so as we headed back for lunch on the Deathbus, there were certain things we probably did and did not plan for with any reasonable accuracy. Price wasn't an issue, since we'd be renting at the DWMA flat rate of $200 a month, but our available choices were probably thin. This was the middle of the semester, so the other EAT students had probably already snatched up the best real estate. There was some ambiguity there, since Maka and Soul had been renting their apartment for…a while, probably years. Just how long was the lease? And how many DWMA apartments even were there? If the EAT students lived in the city –pretty much a no-brainer– then they would need residences for all of that time, but there had to be at least one or two new EAT students every semester, right?
That was logistics beyond me, since real estate and housing weren't exactly my areas of expertise, but it was pretty obvious that Rex and I would be picking over the dregs of what everyone else in EAT didn't want. It only remained for us to see how bad that was: would the dregs be simply extra apartments that weren't chosen because there weren't enough students to need them, or would they be in hideously inconvenient locations and have sub-par services or neighbors? Since time alone would tell on that one, we focused on what we did want out of our apartment, if we could get it.
First, two bedrooms. A studio apartment might seem wonderfully chic and novel, at least in my mind, but I had no doubt that Rex would be petrified at the idea of being asleep and vulnerable in basically the same room as myself –not to mention that I didn't particularly like the idea of having no privacy at any time, since the entire apartment opened up on itself. Secondly, if we could manage it, we would like two bathrooms for the sake of further privacy. We both might have had roommates before, but so far as I knew, neither of us had had a roommate of the opposite gender before, and having different bathrooms would solve a lot of awkwardness before it began.
Thirdly, and this one we didn't hold out much hope for, we wanted to be as close to the school as possible, so we could sleep in as late as we could in the mornings. Sure, our exercise schedule meant that we pretty much collapsed into bed as soon as we hit it, but I would definitely enjoy sleeping past 5 AM if I could help it. Of course, that was undoubtedly high up on the lists of most EAT students, so apartments close to the school probably went the fastest.
I hummed thoughtfully as I ticked back what I remembered. We'd really only seen the homes of the main three teams: Maka and Soul, Blackstar and Tsubaki, and Kid and the Thompson sisters. Maka and Soul lived in a fairly normal apartment block –aside from the skewy cartoonish Death City architecture, I mean– and Blackstar and Tsubaki lived in what seemed like a penthouse apartment with wooden floors and screen walls like a Japanese dojo or something similar. Kid, of course, had to be poncy and extra and lived in Gallows Mansion, a manor house that looked a heck of a lot like the school, with black and white brick, red roofs, and a profusion of Lord Death skulls everywhere. It was perfectly symmetrical, of course, inside and out.
In any case, that was a heck of a lot of variety. Maka and Soul had a pretty average American apartment, albeit with a lot of brightly colored and mismatched walls and carpets, but Blackstar and Tsubaki had one that was very much Japanese, with tatami mats, shōji dividing screens, wall scrolls, and a bathroom with a wooden tub and lath-barred window. Allegedly, Blackstar and Tsubaki's apartment was also small enough that they had to share a bedroom, but Soul and Maka had their own bedrooms, and presumably another one or something similar for Blair to sleep in or use as a storage place for her stuff. Kid was sort of in a class all his own, since he was the son of Lord Death and therefore something of a minor celebrity and/or political figure. I wasn't quite sure where his status lay, since "deity" and "son of deity" weren't exactly part of the ubiquitous social ladder back in my home dimension. I mean, it'd definitely be near the top, but they were sort of in a niche all their own. Was it bad for them to get involved in politics, because that would radicalize people by their mere presence and suggested opinion? Was it awkward for Kid to deal with people literally worshipping his dad? Was it odd for Lord Death to have students who also looked up to him as a deity?
These were things that I was in a position to learn, but even now that we were in EAT and presumably would be seeing much more of the main cast, I was leery of getting too close. Getting involved with the main cast meant pulling myself into the plot, sooner or later, and I still wasn't sure if I wanted to chance that. Better to be a remote observer, so I could jump in when I needed to, than jump in too early and ruin everything. It was always easier to let a cat out of a bag than put it back in, and all that.
There wasn't much beyond those three concerns that occupied me and Rex as we stopped at a sandwich shop for lunch, eating in one of the garden plazas that dotted the city. As renters, we were both inexperienced and we knew it: we weren't asking for things that concerned a lot of first-time apartment tenants because those things didn't particularly concern us. The price range was moot, since even if we did have to get an apartment outside the school subsidiary, I had a bucketload of money from my illicit bet about the cricket match at Weston. I could probably buy a damn house with all of that, and the only reason I didn't put it forward immediately was because the future was an uncertain thing and I was saving as much of my money as possible. You never knew, in this sort of world, when something might happen that would require an obscenely huge bribe or a lot of scientific/research funding to get going.
There was also the nonzero chance that I'd be run through more anime, and I did not want to live in an anime world, any anime world, broke. Right now we had a nice safety net and apartments that we could afford through our school allowance, and I was not going to waste money showing off.
Anyways, the price range of the apartment was a nonfactor. The neighborhood that it was in was probably also not a concern, since I wasn't entirely certain if Death City even had red-light districts, and even if it did, we were part of a worldwide task force of superpowered teenagers. I doubted security would be a concern for us, unless someone was breaking into our apartment to try an assassination or something. Similarly, the quality of the apartment was probably not going to be a problem: these were apartments rented out in some circular way from the school, hence, we were essentially living in dorms. And while yes, I'd heard all sorts of vague horror stories about college students living in dorms, about how barren and poor-quality they could be, this was the DWMA, and they'd already proven that they were several cuts above that. Rex and I would (probably) not be living in a concrete shoebox.
Following that, I guess we just had to wait and see. Thankfully, poor Naigus wasn't the one to show us around –you sort of smiled and nodded when you thought that this school with hundreds of students only had four or five members of faculty, but in real life, compiling that with the fact that Naigus and Sid had jobs outside the school as special ops and the rest of the teachers had equally diverse roles…you had to wince at what their workload and schedule must be like.
It was Misery, in point of fact, who took time out of her schedule to take the role of real estate agent.
"Detached or semidetached homes go the fastest." she explained, pointing out locations on a map of the city set on the table between us. "Most EAT students stay in residence for at least four or five years, and sometimes even remain after they graduate. Having what basically amounts to their own property is a very appealing prospect."
Having never lived in an apartment block or anything like one, I was a bit foggy on why, since living alone or with very distant neighbors was the only way I knew how to live my life. Eh, the whole "noisy neighbors and overhead thumping" thing with apartments couldn't be that bad…right?
"I don't think we really care about trying to get one of those, right, Rex?" I asked, looking at my partner. He nodded, mid-munch on his latest sandwich. "Yeah, we're fine with having an apartment."
"Very sensible of you." Misery commented, tracing her finger over the map. "There are about a dozen apartments open as of now –in the blocks here, here, and here."
I frowned over the map as Rex scooted closer, swallowing. The buildings Misery had tapped were all on different streets and in different areas of the city, roughly equidistant from the school. I tapped the one that was closer, however, by a noticeable margin.
"How come this one's still untenanted if it's only a couple blocks from the school?" I asked, and Misery smiled, reaching over to trace a line up the street it lay upon.
"The street follows the slope of the hill quite steeply –it's mostly all uphill to get to the school, and downhill to come back. Some students don't find the idea comfortable, which is why several apartments here are still left open." She nodded wisely and took her finger away, folding her arms. "The Deathbus also doesn't stop on that street, so the only way to commute to the school is to walk or find your own vehicle."
I winced. As mentioned, I'd only gotten my provisional driver's license, and that was almost two years ago now, with no practice in between now and then.
"You know how to drive?" I asked, looking over at Rex. He mirrored my wince, shaking his head.
"Death City isn't exactly a good place for learning it." he said, shaking the last crumbs of his sandwich off his fingers before grabbing a napkin. "Most of us rely on the Deathbus 42 for commuting to and from the school, and there's other bus routes if we want to go shopping."
"Got a bike?"
Rex blinked. "Like a motorcycle? Or a bicycle?"
"Yes."
"Uh…no?"
I heaved a heavy sigh and turned back to the map, pondering it, as Misery politely waited for us to finish discussing. Measuring distances on a map wasn't my best skill, but I managed well enough, or so I hoped.
"So hypothetically, this is something we can commute on our own two feet." I said, tracing the same route Misery did. "What about the other two apartment blocks? The bus route go by there?"
"This one, yes." Misery said, touching the block on the far right. "The other, you have to walk a few blocks."
I rubbed my chin, considering. Rex leaned over the table, planting his chin in one hand.
"I'm liking the one by the hill." I said, pointing it out. "More cardiovascular fitness is hardly a bad thing for us, and this close to the school, we can sleep in more."
"What are the apartments in it like?" Rex asked.
"Well, we'll be visiting them before you finalize your decision, but there's one on the second floor, two on the third floor, and another the fifth floor." Misery said briskly, bringing out another paper from her satchel and laying it over the map. "The second floor is a studio apartment with an en suite bathroom, overlooking the street. The third floor apartments are divided up into kitchen, living room, and two bedrooms, but there's only one bathroom to share, and their windows face the adjacent buildings. Lastly, the fifth-floor apartment does have two bathrooms, and faces the street, but it's up five flights of stairs with no elevator."
"But it's not a studio either, right?" I asked. Misery shook her head.
"No, this one is divided up into living room, kitchen, and two bedrooms, same as the others."
Rex and I looked at each other.
"Fifth floor seems most enticing." I said, and he nodded. "I mean, getting our stuff up there will be a bit of a slog, but we only have to do that once."
Misery smiled brightly and steepled her fingers together.
"Before we go to visit, I want to remind the two of you of a few rules." she said, and Rex and I straightened up. "Rent is due at the first of every month, and consists of a $200 flat rate for electricity, water, and other utilities, such as trash collection. You are also responsible, however, for your own groceries, hygiene products, and any luxuries you deem necessary, so that should be factored into your budget."
I nodded. Neither of us seemed inclined to extravagant spending, and besides, there was always my backup funds.
"The apartment comes furnished, but any additional furniture or decorations come out of your finances as well." Misery continued. "You cannot perform any permanent alterations to the apartment, such as painting the walls or replacing the floor, without first getting permission. More details on that will be in the contract of your lease, but broadly speaking, you should always ask before adding anything to your apartment that might change it. Posters are fine if they won't damage the walls when removed, paintings likewise, and most furniture is fine as well. You can, of course, rearrange the furniture inside the apartment as you please, unless it causes a fire hazard."
That made sense, and was yet again something that I wasn't overly concerned with. As long as the apartment had beds and basic necessities, at this point, I was good.
Misery continued, giving us a lengthy run-through on what, exactly, one could expect from being an EAT student and owning (well, renting) an apartment in Death City. It included any repairs we would have to make if something happened, i.e. a Kishin Egg busting through the window trying to kill us, how our school-based insurance covered that, what cancelling our lease before our time was up did in regards to our credit and so on, what arrangements to make in case of an emergency, and so on. It was a very long, very thorough lecture, and despite my best efforts I found myself zoning out more than once as Misery plowed her way through an extensive sheaf of legalese. Too many big words strung too close together for far, far too long, and more than that –they were all highly technical words that I wasn't going to use ever again except in this exact circumstance.
Not exactly the best recipe for keen attention.
Finally, though, Misery stuffed us both into her tiny little car and drove us to the apartment block, explaining en route where the nearest bus stop was so that after she went back to her normal duties, Rex and I could find a way to drag our stuff here. I wasn't too worried about that –thanks to the spell of infinite hammerspace cast upon my apocalypse bag, I could potentially stuff an entire bedframe in there (well, if I could get it past the mouth of the bag) and the weight wouldn't change at all. I already had an extensive wardrobe stuffed inside my bag, plus a library of magical textbooks, magical toolkits, some weapons and a whole heck of a lot of ammo, and about a month's worth of rations and some other survival odds and ends. Honestly, at this point, the one thing I didn't have in my bag was probably furniture.
When we got out of the car, I found myself looking up at the tall buildings hemming us in with some trepidation. It was alright enough if they were skyscrapers, but something about the way that these apartment blocks loomed without quite really being tall enough to loom got me on edge. It was like standing at the bottom of a canyon, except it was man-made rather than natural and the street was wide enough to make those misgivings seem almost silly. It was a weird sort of almost-paranoia, and it made me wonder if I was being unnecessarily jumpy again. Something to ask the school psychologist, maybe…?
Narrow alleyways separated the buildings, looking cool but cramped as the dazzlingly bright sunlight bounced off the light-colored plaster adorning all the buildings, turning the street into something of a shimmering bake oven. I mentally reminded myself to get sunglasses before going out during the day again as Rex and I followed after Misery, me squinting just a little. Rex, with his nifty fedora, seemed a lot less affected by the glare, which made me suspect that that was one of the reasons he had that dorky little hat to begin with.
"And this will be your apartment block for the next few years, if you finalize the deal." Misery said brightly as we stopped, gesturing up at the building. I inspected it thoughtfully, shading my eyes with one hand and making a metal note to find a lighter, cooler outfit than a white shirt and canvas shorts. Even though we were in November right now, it was still hot out.
The bricks of the apartment block were a vague lilac color, with three large black columns stretching up to flank the front of the building on either side and divide it right down the center. Above the first floor, each level had two arched windows between the columns, complete with a small, hemispherical green balcony with wrought-iron railings. Separating each floor were swooping lines carved into the brick, arching upwards to connect at what I presumed to be the separate barrel sections of each column. At the second-highest level, just underneath the eaves, a larger teal balcony looped all the way around the front of the building, with a few thin piers placed in the open space between each column, which continued through the balcony. Above them was a short black crenelated wall, with uneven protrusions, above which the red-brick roof rose, pierced with several more windows, which indicated more apartments within, and a rounded chimney gushing steam or smoke. One of the enormous flying buttresses –and in this case literally flying, as it didn't prop anything up– that extended from the base of the school rose large above the nearby skyline.
All in all, aside from the bubble-rounded balconies and the uneven crenelations, it wasn't really that cartoony. I didn't have enough experience with urban planning to say whether or not a purplish off-white was that weird, but the building on the left was slightly lighter, and the one on the right had an entirely white plastering over its bricks. They were divided from what ostensibly would be our building by narrow alleys, ones I made a mental note to avoid once things got dark. Sure, being attacked in an alley was a desperately stereotypical thing to happen, but this was an anime that very much worked on tropey logic. I couldn't be too careful.
"Looks nice." I said by way of comment. Except for roaches scuttling out of the cracked plaster, I didn't exactly know what I was supposed to be looking to avoid.
"I think my cousin lives here." Rex said, squinting for the first time as he peered up at the top balcony level, the one that looped all the way around the front with only a single wall dividing it down the center.
"What, the one in EAT? The one you ditched because he didn't do shit?" I said, and Rex winced, reaching up to tug at his earring.
"He wasn't that bad…"
"He wasn't that good either." I pointed out brutally, and he winced again, but didn't deny it. "There's not gonna be any problem with that, right? I mean, he's not gonna start trouble?"
"No." Rex shook his head decisively. "If anything, he'd be happy to see me getting a good partner."
He blinked at his own slip, but it was too late to take it back as I grinned.
"Aw, you do think I'm a good partner." I cooed, piling on the sweetness obnoxiously as I nudged him a few times with my elbow. "Isn't this the happiest day of your life? Eh? Eh?"
Rex looked like he wanted to die a thousand deaths as Misery looked back at us and smiled fondly, completely having missed the subtext of Rex accidentally labeling a Witch as a "good partner" and me teasing him relentlessly over both it and the fact that he couldn't deny it right now, because if he denied it then he'd have to explain to Misery why his totally-very-human partner was somehow insufficient.
Kill me. Rex's eyes begged.
Not a chance. I mentally replied as I pinched his cheeks and tugged outwards with more saccharine coos, grinning unrepentantly.
"Anyways," Misery said as I looked back at her, Rex's face stretched out in my hands. "Shall we go up?"
"Sure." I said, letting go with an audible snap as Rex yipped quietly, his face smacking back into less comedic proportions before he rolled his jaw a few times, rubbing his cheeks in a circular motion. You know, anime physics like that were kinda fun to play with…
I resolutely tore my mind away from ideas about pranking/tormenting my partner with my meta knowledge of anime logic and physics. Knowing my luck, I'd either accidentally kill him or make Rex think I was trying to kill him, both of which would halt my progress on the Death-Scythe front rather neatly. I was on good behavior. I was on good behavior.
So fucking help me, I was on good behavior.
I repeated that mantra as desperately and resolutely as I could as we all headed up the staircase –sure, I was a magnet for trouble, but if I just kept my head down and preemptively dodged all the shitty anime tropes, I should be able to snatch a few months of peace before Rex and I smacked facefirst into Operation Fuck Medusa: Crona Redemption. It would be fine. This world worked on the most stereotypical and cliché of anime tropes, which meant that as long as I kept my wits about me I should be able to avoid most of the egregious wastes of time or distractions. I had been super careful thus far about avoiding Witch attention, more specifically the two main heavyweights, and Rex and I had gotten into EAT, so the only thing left to do was…search…out…monsters…
I almost heard the deadpan twang as my head lolled back my shoulders. Yeah, the next few months should be totally clear of danger and trouble as far as my schedule went, since we would be busy seeking out soul-devouring monsters and killing them on our own.
Yeah, that wouldn't be risky at all.
I swear, if trouble doesn't come to me, the universe gets tweaked so I have to deliberately seek it out on my own.
Depressing thoughts about my future decreased life expectancy aside, Misery unlocked and pulled open our green-painted door with a flourish, ushering us into the apartment. It was…nice. The kitchen and the living room overlapped a little, with a floating island counter and a hard line of tiles-to-carpet the only thing that was separating the two.
On the left-hand side, the kitchen seemed mostly barren, with a fridge, dishwasher, and stove embedded into the countertops lining the wall, and a few cupboards up above. There were no appliances though, and no racks of cooking utensils or what-have-you on the backsplash between the cupboards and the counters. On the right, across the line of the carpet, were three smallish couches arranged around a long, low coffee table, with a TV against the opposite wall from the kitchen. Directly opposite us and slightly to the right, on the far wall, was the French window that opened up onto our small rounded balcony, and on the right wall again, a little farther away than the TV, was a hallway that I presumed led to the two bedrooms and bathrooms.
"It's nice." I said after a half-second to take this all in. Rex nodded. The colors weren't too garishly, cartoonishly clashing either –it was mostly a unified series of off-whites and pale tints, matching the overall pastel look of the building. "I guess we have to buy our own cooking tools and stuff, though?"
Misery hummed agreement, beckoning us towards the hallway. Sure enough, there were two doors leading to two bedrooms, which were functionally identical except that the one on the left (going down the hallway) had another window looking out onto the street, one that was small and round and honestly more of a porthole than anything else. Each bedroom had a bed, a chest of drawers, and a nightstand with a lamp on top, as well as a door that led into a small bathroom with a shower-bathtub, sink, and toilet.
"Dibs on the room on the street." I said as we tromped back to the living room, and Rex blinked at me. No doubt he was wondering if I wanted it because I was doing something sketchy, like flying off on a broomstick to the Witches' Mass, but the truth was a lot simpler. Though I didn't precisely care which of us got which room, since they were basically identical, I did care that the room on the street was on the street, so if something horrible happened and everything went south, I would be that much closer to a viable exit. Sure, that porthole window was tiny as shit, but if I really had to, I could ram right through the bricks with my magic walls.
"Uh, sure." Rex said after a few seconds. He probably couldn't think of any reason to deny me, and to be fair, with this apparently being a building full of other DWMA students, I wouldn't be stupid enough to sneak off in the middle of the night and not expect to get caught. It'd be fine.
"So you're taking this one?" Misery asked with a pleasant smile, and we looked at each other. This time I waited for Rex to respond, and he did after a moment's hesitation, looking at my face.
"Yes, I think we will." he said, turning to Misery. "So…do we do paperwork now?"
Maybe it was just me and my deep and overwhelming fear of all things official at this point, but I swear Misery's eternally pleasant smile took on a leering, Jack-o-lantern's edge at those words –and then she brought out the stacks, the literal stacks, of papers we would apparently have to sign. For just a moment, before the void buried us in a crushing swarm of papery doom, I had time to curse the anime rules of comedic, convenient hammerspace –and then the rustling horde was upon us, burying both me and Rex in a tide of white leaves.
***Time Skip***
Moving in, as I had originally thought, was easier than you might think. All my things were in my apocalypse bag, which was basically just a rucksack, and even though Rex had been living in Death City for years, he had been living in the dorms –not necessarily great places to pick up a lot of furniture. He also didn't let me help him move what pieces he did have, which led me to suspect that he'd probably hidden my journal in a chest of drawers or something.
Well, Rex actually didn't let me help move any of his stuff, which I could get, even if it made me feel a bit awkward as he dragged volley after volley of stuff up to the apartment while I was busy unpacking my things and settling them about my room. Don't let a Witch touch your things and whatnot, since I might put some kind of tracking device or deadman's switch on his clothes or something. After all, promising not to harm him now still left a wide field of options for harming him later, enacting things that would not physically harm him but nonetheless get him in an ocean of trouble, or just handing him off to someone else to harm. Lots of loopholes in that statement, even if he did take it at face value.
Eh. Enough time together would cure him of that paranoia, hopefully.
First things first, I pulled out all my hot-weather clothing, but kept the more archaic stuff that had been tailored for me in Black Butler inside my bag. While that might not be enough to directly tip off Medusa or Arachne, having old-timey gowns tailored to me seemed a bit eccentric, and I was going to be aggressively normal as far as my room went. No witchy stuff, my phone in my bag (since I was still fuzzy on how far technology had advanced), nothing that anyone who hadn't been a drifting teenager for the past couple years might have. I had normal clothes and normal boxes of ammo that I tucked in various locations across the room, just in case something happened and I couldn't grab the box stuffed under the edge of my mattress. I intended to put my Colt there when I went to bed, just for some extra insurance.
Second thing of conspicuous normality that I did, no matter how shudderingly it chafed at me, was not put up wards. Sure, nothing I could remember seemed to indicate that meisters could sense magic as a discreet force, so after I had actually put up my walls there'd be nothing to give me away, but there was plenty in both the anime and the manga to indicate Witches could.
And above all things, I didn't want to tip any Witches off that I, you know, existed. I could talk to the DWMA, reason with the DWMA –not so much with Medusa or Arachne, who could and would blackmail me six ways from Sunday before I could so much as stammer out a denial.
So if I wanted to protect my room –or the apartment at large– I would have to go old-school, with an electric burglar alarm, consciously locking every door and window, and a, a tripwire with a rattling tin can attached. Or I could go the murder-mystery route and leave a piece of tissue paper carefully tucked into the closed doors, so I'd know if someone opened them: presumably, they wouldn't notice the paper as it fell to the ground, and even if they did replace it, there was practically no chance at all that they'd put it in the right spot. I could go all Home Alone on our apartment, though I'd probably have to tell Rex about both the traps and the idea thereof.
Was I paranoid? I wasn't paranoid.
In any case, I'd gotten everything packed away long before Rex even finished dragging his stuff up the stairs, and so was left to shuffle awkwardly around the apartment, opening cupboards, the stove, and the fridge, trying to figure out where everything was and how it worked, not to mention where we'd be able to put our groceries and suchlike after we went food shopping. I was looking forward to having my own places to store food, rather than the whole communal thing that went on at the dorms. I hadn't gotten tired of the greasy goodness of modern American food either, so there'd probably be a fair number of takeout meals in our future. Maybe pizza for dinner again –it had cheese and tomatoes and bread, which made it healthy enough, right? Totally.
One of the sucky things about just having moved in was the fact that I couldn't shuffle around props while I awkwardly waited for Rex to finish up, and it didn't exactly take long to open up all the cabinets, see that they were empty, and close them again, especially considering we had a limited amount of functions on our stove, our fridge, and our dishwasher. Twiddling buttons didn't take up much time either, and eventually I wandered out to the balcony.
I tapped my foot against the base. It felt like plaster or concrete, which seemed a bit odd to use for a balcony, especially considering the quite solid hemispherical form of the green-painted base and the comparative thinness of the iron railings poking out of it. Still, what did I know about architecture?
The balcony was wide enough to sit and to stand, even to spread out a little, but it was still pretty small –Rex and I would be a bit cramped if we both tried to stand out here at the same time. Still, the fact that we had a balcony attached to our apartment was pretty cool to me, who had never lived above the second level of a normal house. Size didn't really matter.
It's how you use it. I thought with a snort, shaking my head and turning to go back inside. The balcony window/door didn't have a lock, which was probably going to keep me up at night until I arranged a tripwire or something. Or installed a lock –were we allowed to do that? It would definitely be a permanent addition to the apartment, but it was a security measure, so they'd like that, right? It wasn't like I was expanding the balcony or something.
"So…" I said as I wandered back in, seeing Rex in the kitchen area gulping down a glass of water, slightly red-faced. "You done?"
"Y-yeah."
"Well, um…" I shifted from foot to foot, tried to find something interesting in the nearby plaster wall. Sure, taking charge during a fight was easy, because I moved and then Rex followed and if we tried anything else we'd not-quite-literally trip over our own feet, but taking charge in a more general sense was hard. It still felt way too bossy, and not in a good way. "Once you've cooled off from moving your stuff and whatever, we can go back down to the school and pick out our first mission. Uh, okay?"
He nodded, still clutching his glass.
"That seems reasonable."
"Right. Cool. Great." I swung my arms a little and shifted again. "Um…do you think we should try to get a bike or something? Like more exercise is fine, but we've got to put a limit somewhere, otherwise we'll be tearing our muscles too fast for them to build back up again…"
"I'm fine with whatever you decide."
And what a wonderful non-answer that was. I sighed.
"Let's just go…I mean, unless you need more time to cool down?" I raised an eyebrow at him, but Rex shook his head and turned his glass upside-down, placing it in the sink.
"No, we can go now." he said. Direction thus established, we both poked our keys inside our pocket to make sure that we still had them, stepping outside into the hallway. I locked our door, and we proceeded in silence down the stairs, the steps of which sloped and softened in a way that made the back of my neck prickle just a little. Cartoonish architecture took some getting used to, especially since it wasn't exactly the most people-friendly.
"We should probably check where the mission is before we accept it." I finally said as we started tromping up the street. "I mean, do you have a raincoat or anything like that?"
"Not back at our apartment, no." Rex said, adjusting his hat a little. "But worst comes to worst, we can just buy an umbrella, right?"
"Eh." I shrugged and seesawed my hand. "Depends on where we're going. That's kinda my point though –its November, so once we get out of the whole arid-desert thing, there's going to be snow and ice and cold throughout most of the rest of the continental US. There's going to be weather, basically, and I know you don't have to prep for it as much as me, but trust me, we have to factor that into how we'll be fighting."
"We could go somewhere tropical." Rex suggested.
"I don't know any tropical languages." I said, making a face. "You?"
"Japanese, but that's not exactly tropical, is it?"
"Nope." I sighed. "Well, maybe we can learn. And I mean yeah, most people will probably be able to speak English, but if we're hunting down a monster, I don't want to have to rely on translation. What if someone in cahoots with it speaks the local language and we don't? They could be plotting all sorts of stuff and we'd never catch them."
"So you want to go, uh, local for our first mission?" Rex asked, brightening a little.
"Eyyy, that's my boy." I said, giving him a hearty backslap. "If we stick to the southern half of the US for our first kill, we'll be able to speak the language and be in an environment we're prepared for. Heck, who knows –we might get a job in Death City itself."
Maka had killed that Jack the Ripper Kishin right here, hadn't she? There was no argument to the contrary, and if she had, then that pointed to the availability of Kishin Eggs right in our own backyard, which was lowkey terrifying, but represented an excellent opportunity for two newbies out on their first mission. Cultural vandalism aside, neither of us were ready for a whole Indiana Jones-type adventure yet. This was the Level 1 mission, the tutorial, the most basic of basic story arcs. Narratively, all three of the main teams –Maka and Soul; Blackstar and Tsubaki; and Kid, Liz, and Patty– had accomplished those rookie missions in the first three chapters/episodes of the series. It was supposed to be simple, easy.
I was going to keep my fingers crossed, though. Shounen anime logic dictated that anything that could go wrong, would go wrong, as long as it was entertaining and advanced my/our personal growth. Something getting fucked up on our first mission seemed like it would be a pretty good candidate for all those categories. Therefore, Rex and I needed to pick a mission that was easy, but not too easy, because that invited something horrible happening to raise the stakes, like a stronger enemy conveniently stumbling across us mid-fight. Likewise, we couldn't hurl ourselves at impossible odds, because plucky protagonistdom aside, that was just a complex way of getting ourselves killed. I wasn't sure how much the whole "spit blood and stand back up with a quote about the power of friendship/teamwork" would work on my physiology –where I came from, being able to cough up blood meant that something was fucked with your lungs and you probably had less than an hour before they stopped working entirely.
Maybe thirty minutes.
I wasn't a doctor.
Anyways, the ideal mission would be one that was a challenge, but not an impossible one. Shounen anime took a dim view of someone coasting by and trying to take the easy path, so as much as I'd like to find the easiest, lamest quest on the board, it was probably wiser not to. It was a lot like video games, actually –in an ideal scenario, we'd be fighting someone on level or perhaps just a shade better than we were, someone we could defeat by teamwork and intelligence, and as we got stronger, so would the foes we faced. Pulling a Leroy-Jenkins right out of the gate was patently suicide, but if I went after a metaphorical slime or something, I doubted whatever laws that governed this world would be overly impressed. Middle-grounding it was probably the safest way to go.
Speaking of which…
"Hey Rex –obviously not for this case– but later, we should really try to teach you how to fire a gun, if you don't know already." I said. "I know you can probably, like, at least self-defend a little if we get separated and you have to fight on your own, but I want you to have a ranged option too, just in case."
Rex looked nervous as we walked under the toothy arches of the school's entrance.
"Uh, a gun? Are you sure about that?" he asked plaintively, and I shrugged.
"Hey man, safety first. What would you do if we got separated and the only way to save me or yourself was to hit something from a long ways away?"
"Die, probably." Rex said with a sigh of defeat, his shoulders sinking. "But I'm a Weapon. A buster sword. I'm not supposed to be long-range."
"All the better to fool our enemies with, my dear." I said in a faux-fairytale tone, patting his shoulder. "Imagine how shocked they'll be when you whip out a gun and mow 'em all down."
Rex grumbled in resigned agreement, adding yet another thing to our future schedule of things to work around –right alongside completing schoolwork, attending school, and somehow fitting Kishin-killing into and around all of the above. I could see the lingering shreds of my free time floating away on the breeze, and whimpered.
Thoughts on my dwindling non-work time aside, Rex soon led me to the bulletin board full of mission files. The bulletins themselves took the form of thin, dark wooden plaques hung on hooks, rectangular in shape and with the three teeth of Lord Death's characteristic mask sticking out from the bottom. Just above this was a relief of a stylized golden soul with two symmetrical scrolls leading out from it, and above this was the black card with gold writing that actually gave the mission and its details. Some of these cards had a big red circular stamp on them, making them completed: others had a white "In Progress" tag slung diagonally across them on a string. Some others, including those that were In-Progress, had a pink Lord Death skull slung across them on the opposite diagonal: these read "New."
I hummed thoughtfully, holding a hand to my chin and leaning close to the board as I read off some of the missions that were neither taken by someone else or finished –though that did make me wonder why the finished ones weren't taken off the board instead of being stamped. Eh, I was sure there was a reason.
"Keep an eye out for anything that says 'easy for beginners' or something like that." I reminded Rex, and he grunted a somewhat distracted acknowledgement, his fingers tracing over several plaques. As I read over the ones on my end of the bulletin board, I hummed with a certain note of worry: a lot of these looked tricker than I might've liked, requiring teams or Soul Perception or even fluency in languages I didn't have. Others were just too tough –I even saw the mission Kid had gone on, the one with the mummies in Egypt. Seeing it felt a bit like a wave, or seeing your favorite book in a store. I brushed my fingers over the familiar bit of life fondly and moved on.
"Oh, hey." Rex said, lifting a plaque off the wall. "How about this one?"
I stepped over to him, leaning into his shoulder as he tilted the plaque a little to help me read.
"'Suspected Kishin Egg in North Charleston, South Carolina.'" I read off. "'Location, USA. Mission Requirements: Energy and assertiveness.' The hell? That doesn't sound even slightly professional."
Rex shrugged silently against me.
"Ugh. 'Mission for 1-Star EATS and up. Fluency in English recommended.' Okay, that sounds better. So you think we should take this one?"
"It's close by, it doesn't seem like it'll be too difficult, and it seems like there's only one target." Rex said reasonably as we both straightened up again. "T-that is everything you wanted, right?"
"Everything I wanted and more." I drawled, batting my eyes at him, before dropping the sarcasm. "Good job though. Uh, this is a bit thin on details –does that Auntie lady give us more info when we turn in the card?"
"I've heard that she does." Rex said, flipping the bulletin over to look at its blank side. "Should we go?"
I answered that by grabbing his sleeve and tugging him over to her window, with the usual bending of anime physics that allowed me to spin Rex's stiff body around and drag him along despite my grip only consisting of several fingers pinched in the sleeve of someone who was almost exactly my size and weight.
"Uh, Auntie?" I asked, tapping the bell. "We've got a mission…"
The aforementioned woman soon loomed out from behind the maze of her racks and racks of files –a short and squat blonde woman, with what might unkindly be called a toadlike face, she didn't exactly inspire confidence, but I knew that she was a kind and warm-hearted manager to any students dragooned into helping her stamp and file the mission papers, a fierce fighter in defense of the DWMA, and a loyal teacher. She took the bulletin from Rex, but raised an eyebrow, frowning slightly, as she looked at us.
"I'll have to see some ID before I let you on this mission, dearies." she said, folding her hands on top of the bulletin as she laid it on the counter. "I don't recognize you from EAT."
Already, taking missions involves higher security than getting books from the library, I thought with an inner eye-roll as Rex and I both fished for our IDs and held them up.
"We're new students." I explained as she squinted at them and nodded approval. "This is our first EAT mission."
"And a good mission it is." Auntie said, stashing the bulletin somewhere beneath the counter and then standing up, fishing around in the endless shelves and stacks of paper. "Seems something's been happening in a churchyard in the town. Its remote enough that the locals can avoid whatever's going on, but if someone doesn't get to it soon things -could- get -messy!"
Her last words came out in a series of grunts as she practically had to yank a file out from where it was wedged amongst a stack of its brethren, which she accomplished and then turned back to us with a sigh.
"Here's your details." Auntie said as she laid the manilla folder on the counter. "For every mission you take, you'll get one of these from me. These folders contain the information on who filed the report, what information there is available about the case, and what you're expected to do. If need be, it's also got plane tickets and a map to your proposed location."
I whistled, impressed, as Rex looked greedily at the folder.
"Extracurricular assignments don't end until the students return home to the DWMA." Auntie continued. "So keep that in mind for any future scheduling of yours –it doesn't count until you're back here."
"Got it." we both said.
"If you claim an assignment, you have up to three days to set out to complete it." Auntie said. "If you haven't at least left the DWMA by the end of that time, then the mission goes back to being available to everyone. Lastly, you can only take one mission at a time, though you can be assigned an additional mission by Lord Death or one of the teachers as an extracurricular lesson. Any questions?"
"Nope." Rex said as I shook my head.
"Then good luck!"
We both waved a cheery farewell before walking off with our new paperwork, though I had to tug gently at the folder a few times before Rex would let go of it as we walked back out of the school. Opening it up, I saw that two plane tickets were indeed clipped to the left-hand side, ones that didn't quite look…right. Granted, I'd never seen a this-world plane ticket before, so maybe the Lord Death stamps were normal…though if I had to hazard a guess, I'd say that something about these stamps or some other part of the tickets would clear us for travel at any time. After all, most plane tickets were for a specific flight, and these were in reserve for the mission, so it'd make sense to have them be some sort of anytime-pass that'd let the assigned team (whomever they may be) get on the plane and go as soon as they got the mission.
Speaking of…
"South Carolina's gonna be just about the same as Death City, temperature-wise." I said, reading off a helpful little blurb on the top page of our folder, a speech bubble emerging from a cartoonish, thumbs-up Lord Death. "Or at least, it'll be rain rather than snow. Average of about fifty degrees and ten hours of sunlight. You got clothes that'll match up to that?"
"My normal clothes should do just fine." Rex said, and if this wasn't an anime world, I might've disagreed with him, but since this was an anime world, and he wasn't somehow collapsing while wearing at least two layers of long-sleeved heavy cloth in the desert, I figured he'd know better than me.
"Right. Well, uh, we've technically got three days before we go –you wanna wait until tomorrow to fly out of here, and spend today getting ready?" I asked. "You know, just to make sure we can really hit the ground running."
"…we'll go tomorrow?" Rex said, giving me a sidelong look. I held up my hand as a vow of honor.
"We'll go tomorrow." I promised.
***Time Skip***
In what was absolutely not another flash of rampant paranoia, that evening saw a certain blonde in running shoes, shorts, and a T-shirt threading her way through the labyrinthine network of alleys and roads near our apartment block, water bottle on one hip. I knew the importance of getting in my daily exercise, especially since the after-hours combat lessons were canceled with the rest of classes, but what really had me doing this was the simple urge to know the lay of the land around my new home. If something happened, I wouldn't get lost amongst the tangled maze of side-streets and shadowy little nooks that made up the bulk of Death City.
Granted, our apartment block was on a main thoroughfare, but a lot of the streets around it were as tiny and cramped and twisty as anything you saw in the anime, and I didn't want to be caught napping if worst came to worst. Also, a teeny tiny part of me wanted to sightsee around the city at a time I was reasonably certain nothing horrific would come of me wandering around on my own. When I offered to bring Rex along with me on my run, he'd given me the sort of pleading dead eyes that only an exhausted homebody could manage and said very simply that he was a Weapon. Evidently, strenuous physical exercise was not his beat.
Whatever. I'd drag him out here eventually. All I needed was time…which at this point was the only thing I really had in abundance.
Soles smacking against the baked cobblestones, sweat gleaming on my skin, ponytail bouncing, I jogged my way through the streets near our apartment, trying to scan and center everything in my mental map. With the wheezing sun sinking lower and lower towards the western horizon, the skies were starting to flame red, and the light around me was tinting golden and orange, preparing for the end of the day. Thankfully, not that many other people were about, which made jogging easier, since I didn't have to dodge out of the way of slower pedestrians.
Slowly threading my way back to the street we now lived on, I ran past the apartment, heading towards the hill to the school and starting to ascend it with a not-so-mental wince. The stairs were tough, but this rising incline of hard stone would eat the muscles of my calves and thighs and spit them out for breakfast if I ascended it at a steady jog, something that I discovered, panting raggedly, about halfway up. Still, I struggled on, finally gaining the top of the slope and staggering over to an iron bench to try and uncramp my legs
As I smacked my foot down against the seat of the bench, someone else did the same to my right.
It was so much like an anime meet-cute that I would've hit myself in the face if I had the energy. Girl runs up one side of a strenuous hill, boy runs up the other. In the middle, they meet, distracted enough not to notice each other until they both prop their legs up on the same bench to stretch out their sore muscles. They look up, their eyes meet, and-
And I smacked that thought as far out of my brain as I could manage as I looked at the very familiar star on the white toe of the other person's shoe, my gaze slowly trailing up to the leg attached to the shoe and the person attached to the leg. Muscular arms very at odds with a boy who only came up to my eyes –and that was including the upward spikes of his turquoise blue hair– swung forward as Blackstar interlaced his fingers and stretched his arms too, groaning loudly as there were several audible cracks of his joints. He then lowered them, blinking at me like a sleepy lizard as he finally deigned to notice my presence.
"Uh. Hi?" I said, the burning in my muscles currently forgotten under the pressure of meeting one of the main characters of this world –something I hoped Blackstar would never, ever find out about. His ego was big enough already. "Nice bench…?"
Nice bench. Nice fucking bench.
Rex's social anxiety was wearing off on me, I thought with an internal groan. Whether he was too socially blind himself to notice the dumb slip or whether he was compassionate enough to ignore it, Blackstar just grinned and slapped my back, hard enough to make me lurch forward in a way that had my outstretched leg screaming and my eyes watering.
"Hey, if you say so!" he laughed. "I am the super-amazing Blackstar! And this is my partner Tsubaki."
I glanced aside to see Tsubaki strolling over to us, her hair in its usual long dark ponytail but her casual clothing replaced by a smarty set of matching jogging pants and jacket.
"Ahem! Hi to both of you." I said, clearing my throat importantly before leaning forward to put some more gentle pressure on my leg, easing out the cramps from jogging up the hill. "I'm Arya. You, uh, you guys are from EAT, right?"
"Totally! You go to the DWMA too?" Blackstar said, ostentatiously stretching his leg out farther than mine. I let him have that petty victory, since I wasn't at all interested in showing off.
"Yup. I'm a meister, and I thought, since my partner and I just advanced to EAT too, I should really be trying to build my muscles and suchlike before we went on missions." I said, and jumped, lurching sideways a little, as Blackstar clapped his hand on my shoulder.
"Excellent idea!" he yelled right in my ear, which had me wincing. "What, did you see me out jogging every day and think 'Wow, that Blackstar, he really knows what he's doing, I should copy him'? Well, I do know what I'm doing! And copying me, you'll go far."
I laughed weakly, my eyes sliding sideways under Blackstar's relentless barrage of very loud words. Tsubaki, smiling gently in the background as she replaced the cap to her water bottle, didn't seem in any hurry to free me.
"Uh, sure, sure." I said, which –although I'd never met Blackstar before today– was a strategy that I was reasonably assured would get him off my back the fastest. Just mindlessly agree to everything he says, and he won't feel the need to prove his superiority to me anymore.
I switched legs at roughly the same time he did, stretching out my sore muscles in a way that made me wince, even though I knew I'd be wincing a lot more later than if I didn't do this now. I "uh-huh"ed and "hmmed" in all the right places as he continued to spout his own praises –and to a certain extent, Blackstar wasn't wrong. Anime or manga, whichever this world was, Blackstar was still the strongest combative meister in the EAT class, full stop, and there were worse people I could take advice from, even if most of his advice was buried beneath several layers of narcissistic self-praise.
"You said you just got into EAT." Tsubaki said pleasantly as Blackstar stopped to chug some water. "Did something happen at the Festival?"
"Uh, yeah." I said, wondering how she hadn't heard through the grapevine already. Still, far be it from me to spread rumors, especially rumors that might get certain Witchy parties interested in me. "My partner and I got promoted after the Death Fest, and since school's out right now, we figured to start on our first soul-collecting mission tomorrow."
Tsubaki blinked, then beamed, clapping her hands together gently.
"That's really very admirable of you." she said, looking at me with benign approval. "I hope you'll be able to bring your mission to a successful conclusion."
"I'll say!" Blackstar yanked himself away from his (empty) bottle to grin at me and seize my hand, pulling me in for something that was half a handshake and half a deathly-squeezing threat. "You're aiming for the top, huh?! I respect that energy, but you better watch out, because I am the star, and I'm at the top, and there's nobody that can knock me off that spot, got it!?"
"I'm not aiming for the top, per se." I temporized, knowing better than to try and rip my hand away. Giving how chiseled his arms were, there was no way Blackstar wasn't stronger than me. "I just don't want anybody in EAT sneering at me or my partner when we walk into class, 'cause he's kinda got an unlucky rep. Plus, the sooner we begin, the sooner we can make a Death Scythe."
Blackstar peered intently into my eyes, like he was searching for something, before he suddenly grinned and let go of my hand, smacking my shoulder in a way that had me staggering sideways just half a step.
"You've got the right attitude!" he said, before flashing me a dazzling grin and a thumbs-up. "Anybody gives you trouble, send 'em to the almighty Blackstar! And if you need a helping hand on a mission, don't be afraid to give me a call! Just don't freak out if I steal your spotlight, kid!"
I'm pretty sure I'm older than you. I thought with an awkward sweatdrop as Blackstar laughed uproariously, Tsubaki's expression likewise crumpling just a little as she stood behind him.
"H-he means well, really…" she assured me, smiling carefully as she held up her hands.
Well, since I was pretty sure that there was no way to un-entangle myself from these two, at least in a social sense, without it coming to blows and hurt feelings…
I flashed Blackstar a responding smile and thumbs-up.
"Just as long as you only steal the spotlight and not the souls, man." I said cheerfully, ignoring my frantic inner screams at the fact that I had already failed my mission to avoid main characters and all their shenanigans as Blackstar grinned and began to rant about his jog routine and about how we should totally match up routes and swap tips during the next few weeks and months or however long we were at the DWMA.
Just what the hell have I gotten myself into?!
11.21 AM, USA Central Time