"Eh I'll just write in Soul Eater, how hard can it be?"

Months later, hip-deep in five different reference documents detailing my plot, the canon plot, the canonical information, and the timeline, speaking softly but with great vehemence: Fuck.

In other words, Atsushi Ohkubo has made it his personal mission to vex me specifically by including tantalizing hints of a firm timeline, but never committing to anything as he includes a mishmash of contradictory details on the time period, time of year, and power sets of this world. My problem is not helped by my stubborn refusal to stop kneecapping myself by trying to make sense of canon and just decide "What I say goes" in the tried and true tradition of fanfic authors everywhere. That would be defeat at this point, and I do not admit defeat. Your canon is going to make sense if I have to manufacture a dozen different situational excuses and drag it there by the hair, Mr. Ohkubo.

And trust me when I say the contest between Arya and the Mario fishing rod will continue, WriterGreenReads.

March 21st, 2022

Arya's POV:

Most of the rest of the plane ride was taken up by what I could only term as a mission briefing, which made perfect sense when you considered how tight security was on this plane. Unless this Cosa Nostra guy had managed to bug the cabin itself, whether via magic or technology, there was no way he'd have any idea of what we talked about, and I was somewhat doubtful of both options. Magic was unlikely because Witches were pretty much lone wolves who certainly had no reason to work with human gangsters, and technology was out since the existence of even cellphones seemed a bit dicey, never mind tiny bugs that you could plant.

I knew landlines, at least, were around, since both the girls and the boys had them in their dorm lobbies, and Maka and Soul had one in their apartment. Big chunky color TVs were a thing too, since I'd seen Maka and the little girl (Rachel, I think?) that Medusa possessed sitting in front of one. Any technology past that was doubtful, especially since I seemed to recall Kilik exclaiming over the newness of the wireless communicator "demon tool" that had been given to him, the Thompson sisters, and Kim during a mission after the Kishin had risen in the manga.

Baffling, that was. But far be it from me to try and make sense of the technology progression and time period of this world: that was Britain's job, since he didn't have to also catch up to several years' worth of schoolwork, hunt for Kishin Eggs, and somehow do all of this at once without seeming suspicious or too skilled. I could just skim off of whatever summaries he sent me.

Anyways.

We had a rough plan of the buildings this Cosa Nostra guy and his men were supposed to be holed up in when we arrived, though it was a floor plan that had been made before they'd taken over what was apparently a warehouse complex, so some things had probably been moved around inside. Our five teams were going to be split up along with the local graduated meister-Weapon pairs –almost a dozen of these– to help provide muscle and, implicitly, impromptu shields for the police coming with us on the raid. They were there to seize evidence, we were there to take out any mobsters with extreme and lethal prejudice.

Me, Tessa, and the kid with the sickle would be split into three of the four converging units that were going to essentially kick down every door in the place and work their way to the center of the building complex. The crossbow and shotgun pairs would be stationed outside with other long-distance teams, ready to gun down any mobsters who managed to fight their way past us.

Given that this was all still meant to be part of a police raid, I felt an unsettling sort of shift in my stomach as our coordinator calmly talked about where we would all be set up and how this would all come together. Despite knowing that these guys were all pretty much literally the definition of pure evil –I mean, you couldn't exactly do worse than killing innocent people and eating their souls– the subtle build of excitement that tinged the air as we briskly talked about how and when we were going to kill them all was…

…well, it wasn't a good feeling, precisely because of how anticipatory I felt. I didn't like how much I was looking forward to this, didn't like how easy it was to brush aside the fact that these people we were talking about were still people. Probably. Nominally. Even if they'd quite literally started the process themselves by becoming Kishin Eggs, we were dehumanizing them, and I didn't like that that was a power DWMA students arbitrarily had.

Now I know why Maka first thought Crona might've been a renegade student. The fact that we could just…decide someone wasn't a human anymore and go for their throat, without a ripple of concern from any witnesses, was a terrifying power to have. It was way too easy to abuse and misuse it, and once again, I suddenly understood why all manner of teachers and Lord Death himself were always harping on how forbidden it was to start eating human souls in the series. It had seemed like a no-brainer to me as an outside observer, but now that I was inside the story itself…well, temptation was a slippery slope.

If someone was bad, by our judgement, then we could kill them and feed their souls to our Weapon without a second thought. But what if we decided someone was bad, and killed them, and they hadn't been wicked enough to qualify as a Kishin Egg? I could easily see an exhausted and ambitious student, seeing that the metaphorical milk was already spilled, shrugging and then offering the hard-won soul to their Weapon anyway. What did it matter? A bad person was still bad, even if their soul was still human. Surely, since it almost counted as a Kishin Egg anyway, it didn't matter that it wasn't all the way there. Surely, since this was a bonafide bad guy, they'd done the right thing, and it was only a little risk to feed the still-blue soul to their Weapon.

And slip, down the slope they went.

I certainly wasn't going to be that person, but the knowledge of how easy it was to make those mistakes and how close that precipice was didn't exactly soothe me. Small wonder nearly every other mention of souls in the series harped on how you absolutely, positively should not hunt people outside Lord Death's list. I could easily see the power trip of wielding this kind of decision-making authority going straight to student's heads, especially when you considered that most if not all of the EAT class was under 18. I mean, giving culturally-sponsored authority to kill anyone they labeled as evil to 13 and 15 year-olds? It was a testament to Lord Death's authority that the DWMA had lasted this long without anyone causing any atrocities.

Actually, no atrocities that I knew of, come to think of it. Now that I was actually in the universe, I had the opportunity to find out a lot more historical information that was irrelevant to the plot Atsushi Ohkubo had created. Maybe a tween somewhere in the DWMA's history had committed atrocities.

Anyway, after the briefing had been finished, our coordinator advised us to get some rest before we landed in Italy, since we'd be going almost straight from the airport to the raid site, with only one stop in between to meet up with the rest of the local forces. Some of the others tried curling up on or reclining the puffy airline chairs, but I tugged Rex's shoulder and pulled him away from the group for a chat.

"You good with this?" I asked him as we entered the back of the section, finding new seats as the plane hummed softly beneath our feet. "I mean, you kinda freaked out before, with the Traitor. I'm gonna be doing the same thing here, swinging you at people. Or, well, at least people-lookin' things."

Rex blinked at me.

"I- I think I'm fine." he said, and took off his glasses, rubbing them on the corner of his shirt. "I mean, it's not like it was before. We know these guys are Kishin Eggs. This is sorta my whole job."

"Yeah, but unless I badly miss my guess, you've never done it before." I said, raising an eyebrow. "Take it from me, being prepared for a fight is still a hell of a lot different than actually being thrown into one, even if you've been preparing to be an EAT student for what, most of your life? You're right, it's not like the Traitor before, but it's also not like that evil spirit we fought last time. She was already dead. These guys are still alive, and they're gonna move and act mostly like humans."

"I can do this." Rex said, and his gaze was uncharacteristically sharp as he put his glasses back on. "What are you saying, Arya? Are you telling me I should back out of this? That you're going to do all the work again?"

"I'm…making sure we're on the same page, because this is the first time we're actually killing real, live people, and that's a heavy thing." I replied without any bite, rubbing the back of my neck a little, and he immediately softened.

"You nervous, too?"

"Yeah. No. Kinda?" I admitted. "It's just…weird. I'm not used to this. Most of the things I dealt with in, uh, my family business…they weren't really…it was just different, okay? A lot different. I'm still adjusting to all this."

Rex nodded, apparently not sure of what to say. I took in a deep breath.

"I guess what I mean is…back me up, out there?" I asked with a fragile smile, offering my knuckles for an equally-tentative fistbump. "Mr. Born-and-raised-at-the-DWMA."

Rex smiled a little and gently bumped my fist with his own.

"Sure thing, partner."

*** Time Skip***

The trans-Atlantic flight time did our sleeping schedule no particular favors –though at least in first class we could recline the chairs fully and have a soft surface to sleep on– and there wasn't much joy taking turns with everybody else to brush my teeth and other such morning refreshments in the tiny cramped closet of an airplane bathroom. Still, I got some sleep, ate some food, and jittered about the cabin with the other DWMA students, most of us being too keyed up to sit still for long as our coordinator snored in his chair, hat drawn firmly over his face.

I was stuck running over my practical necessities again and again in my head. It was essentially a thirteen-hour flight from Nevada to Sicily, nonstop, which meant that since we'd met in the early afternoon in Death City, we'd be landing in the wee hours of the morning, a perfect time for an ambush. In acknowledgment of this, I'd worn a navy hoodie atop a grey sleeveless shirt, with dark jeans worn until they were loose. I wouldn't be winning any prizes for protagonist-ness character design, but then, I wasn't exactly dressed with that in mind.

Rex and I were both armed, me with my trusty Colt, him with the actual automatic pistol I'd gotten from Mey-rin. If we were separated, we could still fight at long range and in melee combat, since I had my combat knife as well, strapped to my outer left thigh. My Colt and its holster were slung across my body, and I had several rounds of ammunition in the hoodie pockets. My sneakers were well-used and serviceable: I was used to moving and fighting in these, and I knew I could climb and run and dodge as needed.

After some thought, I'd pulled my hair back in a ponytail. There was some doubt there, though, because Soul Eater wasn't generally the type of series in which…oh, how would I put this…reality hit hard?

What I meant by that was, a lot of shounen series made a point of hitting the audience hard with the tough, gritty reality of things: if you got shot in such-and-so a place, you'd die, and reality, especially fight scenes, had some very firm confines that nobody could rail against no matter how hard they tried. You just could not do such-and-such a thing, because it wasn't realistic. Those kinds of series took pride in pointing this out to you.

Soul Eater was definitely not that kind of series. In most cases, it was Rule Of Cool all the way –as in, anything would be forgiven or possible, no matter how implausible it was, as long as it looked sick as hell. Taking for-fucking-ever to charge your finishing moves, loudly announcing your intended attack, bending and twisting and jumping like you'd been given a temporary leave from gravity…you get the gist. In Soul Eater, the more progatonist-y the fight was, the more physics took one look at the fight scene, shrugged, and gave up.

And I definitely did not have the same kind of…plot armor halo that Blackstar and the others did, so it was probably smart of me to be as practical as possible: hence, tying my hair up in a ponytail to avoid it getting grabbed and yanked by anyone else during a fight. Granted, I'd never seen that happen to anyone in the series, and something would have to be seriously wrong for someone to have gotten past Rex's stabbing distance to grab for my hair, but still. Better safe than sorry, especially when it came to keeping myself alive.

I'd considered bringing gloves to hide the paleness of my hands, help me blend into the nightscape and all that, before I abruptly realized that with a buster-sword in hand, I wasn't going to be doing much hiding. Rex was almost as big as I was in his sword form and the idea of trying to sneak around an urban landscape like a ninja with him in tow was downright laughable. Plus, if I understood the mission briefing that had been delivered to us after we arrived on the plane, we wouldn't be doing much sneaking. It was gonna be very much a "kick down the door and let the guns start blazing" sort of mission: no stealth required.

I had weapons. I had comfortable, practical, easy-to-move in clothes. I was ready.

Problem was, of course, that I wasn't going to get any readier for waiting, and there was a long wait between when I finally settled everything in my mind and when we landed in Italy. I tried to distract myself, thinking of all the places and times I'd flown around Italy before, but it wasn't working. Other thoughts kept intruding, and things more formless than thoughts –the insistent sense that something was probably wrong, that I might be missing something important, the worry that I was unprepared for something that was coming.

It was fine, I told myself over and over again. It was fine. Rex and I were armed, our coordinator probably wasn't going to betray us somehow and if he did, I'd almost certainly be able to handle it. The Cosa Nostra guy we were going to raid wasn't even important enough to make it into the series, and Blackstar had dealt with Al Capone –well, Mifune had dealt with Al Capone– and his entire flock of mooks in the prologue arc, which certainly argued that gangsters weren't all that intimidating here. Everything was fine and there was no possible or theoretical thing for me to worry about right now.

I stamped on the sense that that itself should be something to worry about. Paranoia would do me no favors, not yet. Paranoia was stupid, unless they truly were out to get you. The nebulous "they" in this case –consisting of Medusa, Arachne, and probably the other various and sundry villains of Soul Eater– weren't out to get me. Not yet. Everything was fine.

To calm my jitters, I ended up playing another entirely cutthroat game of Go Fish with Tessa, Lukas, and a few of the other students. We ended up combining several decks for it, and after a few rounds I actually managed to rope Rex into playing with us, granting me at least one ally in the game. He didn't do too badly, either.

Then somebody suggested we play poker, and mindful of the fact it would probably come in useful eventually –way too many shows used poker and other such card games as a narrative prop– I agreed, and watched as we divvied up those cheap salty in-flight snack bags to serve as tokens and the only meister who knew how to actually play the game laid out the cards to explain it to those of us who were new. If nothing else, at least I could say I'd played poker for peanuts sometime in my life.

"Okay guys, there's a lotta different types of poker, but the general rules are as follows." The meister who'd suggested the game to us flipped over the deck, spreading the faceup cards out a little so everyone could see them. "Five cards to a hand in almost every version. The types of hands you can have are these, ranging from lowest to highest."

After a few seconds of picking-and-choosing consideration, he slid out five cards away from the scattered clump.

"No pair. Nothing in here matches or goes together. If two players have the same kind of hand, which happens a lot in poker, then the rule is that whichever player has the higher cards will win. Next is pairs, where you have two matching cards, but everything else is mixed. Next is three of a kind, which is three matching cards –three jacks, three sevens, whatever– and two other, non-matching cards."

He rummaged around in the pile of faceup cards and slid several more out, returning the rest to the deck.

"A straight hand is where you have five cards in a sequence, like this, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3. Their suits don't match, though. The opposite, and what counts for higher, is a flush, where you have five cards from the same suit, but they don't go in sequence."

He shuffled the cards around.

"A full house is three matching cards, and then two cards that have a different match. Four of a kind, where you have four matching cards, beats a full house. And the highest hand you can have when you play without the joker card-"

Another quick shuffle.

"-is straight flush. That's where you have five cards in a sequence, just like a straight, but they're all the same suit, too."

"What about a royal flush?" I asked, having heard of this term several times in dramatic showdowns. The meister cocked an eye at me, then bent over the cards again.

"Royal flush is when you have a straight flush with the highest possible number sequence: ace, king, queen, jack, and ten from the same suit. In a game without wild cards, its unbeatable." he explained, pulling the aforementioned cards out of the deck and arranging them. "And it's also a good way to tell if someone's probably cheating, since the odds are almost 1 in 650,000 of it being dealt naturally."

I whistled, impressed for a number of reasons.

"The other highest hand you can have, and this only happens in games where you use a wild card like the joker, is five of a kind, where you have five matching cards. Five of a kind beats out everything, up to and including a royal flush."

We all nodded, much impressed, and the meister pulled out a set of face cards and an ace from the deck, arranging them in order.

"Obviously, the higher a number is, the more powerful it is, but with the face cards, it goes jack, queen, king, and then ace. Jack beats a ten, queen beats jack, king beats queen, and ace beats a king. Ace cards, in most versions of poker, have the highest value. If an incredibly improbable coincidence happens and two people have five of a kind, then a five-of-a-kind ace hand will beat any other hand."

He then scooped up all the cards, shuffling them into Lukas's second deck with brisk, efficient movements as the rest of us sat back or scooted forward, as suited our nature.

"Betting is the whole point of poker." the meister continued. "First thing we do is start a pot, with each player putting down at least one chip during the starting round. At the end of each round, the person with the highest hands gets the whole pot. Starting from the left of the dealer and moving onwards, you place a bet of however many pieces or chips you want, and the people after you either call your bet by putting the same number of chips into the pot, raise it by putting in more chips than you did, or fold. Folding means that you don't bet. You don't put any chips into the pot, you discard your hand, and you wait until the next round to play."

In this, at least, I was on slightly firmer ground, since it was the thrust of most of the betting scenes in the media that I'd seen.

"So, the dealer passes out the cards," the meister said, demonstrating as he did. I picked up my hand, but I kept it facedown against my legs. "-and starting from my left, someone places a bet. The person on their left either raises, calls, or folds. If they raise, the person after them has to call that new bet. The round ends when everyone has either folded or at least matched the bet, and then we do the showdown. Everyone turns over their cards, and the best hand takes the whole pot."

"What about bluffing?" Lukas asked, inspecting his cards with a furrowed brow.

"Eh…" Our resident expert scratched his hair. "That's an intimidation tactic, mostly –the point of bluffing is to try and get others to back out when you have a weak hand. So like, if I bet all ten of my packets –sorry, chips– on this one round, the idea is that you guys would all assume I have an unbeatable hand and fold, since there'd be no point in betting against me. I'd then get to rake in the whole pot on an absolutely garbage hand."

"That's a bit of a risk though, isn't it?" Rex asked, shuffling his five cards around a little.

"Well, yeah. That's why it's called gambling."

I snorted a little at the meister's quip as I turned my hand over, inspecting it. I then blinked in surprise as I saw that I had an ace –the ace of diamonds, more specifically– alongside the seven of spades, eight of hearts, six of diamonds, and seven of hearts. I rearranged them a little –ace, 8, 7, 7, 6. That was almost a, uh, a straight, or whatever it was called when the numbers all went in sequence without matching their suits. To the best of my understanding, my hand right now was a pair –two matching cards, and the rest of them, technically, junk. Still, it was junk with an ace and two sevens, which was impressive enough.

Plastic and cellophane rattled as we all put our buy-in packets of pretzels or peanuts in the center, and everyone's eyes turned to Tessa on the dealer's left hand. She bit her lip carefully, then said "Two chips."

Placing two more bags into the center, Tessa was left with eight tokens, and everyone looked to the side.

"Call." the dealer's partner said, laying down two more bags.

"Call." I agreed, putting forth two of my own.

"Raise, four bags." Lukas said, and put them out.

"Fold." Rex said, looking morosely at his hand.

"Fold." the dealer agreed. "Okay then, time for showdown. Everyone lay down your cards."

We did so, and I cocked my head as I looked at the others. Rex was right to fold: he had pairs, just like me, but they were a pair of threes. The dealer had an ace –the very same ace of diamonds I had, actually, since we were playing with two decks– and a pair of threes. Tessa had a junk hand with a jack in it, and the dealer's partner had a pair of tens and a queen. Lukas, however, had a pair of queens, and I realized immediately why he'd tried to call a larger bet.

Lukas raked in the peanut-and-pretzel pouches, and the dealer raked in our cards, turning them over and shuffling them again as everyone complained or congratulated our winner. The dealer dealt again, and I bit back a groan as I saw my next hand was a garbage one: queen of clubs, eight of clubs, four of diamonds, jack of clubs, and three of clubs. Still, it was garbage with a queen and a jack, so if everyone else had junk hands, I'd probably win.

"Three bags." Tessa said, bringing her total of tokens down to five if she lost this bet.

"Call." the dealer's partner said, also bringing their total down to five.

"Fold." I said. Tessa had upped the ante from our previous game, which meant that she had a strong hand she was confident in. Given as you literally couldn't get weaker than a junk hand, I didn't want to lose any more of my eight tokens.

"Call." Lukas said, sitting pretty on his sixteen bags of peanuts.

"Fold." Rex said.

"Fold." the dealer agreed. "Showdown!"

Everyone flopped their cards down, and I saw that the three of us had been right to fold: Tessa was sitting pretty on a pair of kings, whereas the dealer, Rex, Lukas, and I all had junk hands. The dealer's partner had a pair of tens, which would explain why they'd called the bet rather than dropping out, and Lukas must have been confident in his large pot and his king-queen-10-7-2 hand.

Tessa duly raked in her nine bags, bringing her total up to fourteen, and we continued playing. I was getting the hang of this, and rather surprisingly, enjoying myself. The card-matching aspect was fun, as was the edge of competition and anticipation as we tried each other's defenses and luck. It was also terribly relaxing not to have to worry about high stakes, and I made a mental note to practice my poker with Rex later. It was definitely going to be a useful skill to have, later down the line, and knowing my luck, I'd probably end up having to play for higher stakes than peanuts at some point.

Still, this was wonderfully domestic, in its way. Sitting cross-legged on a vibrating plane floor with a circle of kids almost my own age, dealing cards and packets of snacks onto the dense prickly carpeting, giggling and bantering –quietly, so as not to wake the adult slumbering in his chair. It felt downright cozy, even if I had to snicker a little at myself. I'd raked in a ton of cash with some insider betting, and now here I was on a plane to Italy, planning to deal with a mob boss, as I dealt and lost poker hands. What my parents would've thought of me, I didn't dare guess, but I certainly felt like I was becoming a bit of a badass.

8.53 AM, USA Central Time

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