A/N: Sorry this took a while. It was busy for the New Year, and it took me a while to start writing this chapter. Hopefully things should settle down now that classes have started, although I don't have the time this quarter to write things as fast as I'd like. I'll still update regularly, but it might be a little slow.
Review Responses:
OfAllTheShizz, thanks! Glad you liked it! The Assassin (and some of the old cast) will be coming back into play fairly shortly. Happy New Year to you too!
fanficlove2014, thanks, glad you liked it! I enjoyed writing that scene too, and I love writing Ayame and Rei interacting with each other. Happy New Year!
AmyNChan, you can hug them, but be aware that they are scythe-twins and come with sharp edges sometimes~ I chose a scalpel for Shelley because it seemed to fit. It gives Angela a naginata, which kind of looks like an oversized scalpel and is also the traditional weapon for women of the samurai class, so it gives her a stronger connection to Mifune. From there, I kind of just ran with it and so Shelley's whole wind controlling thing came up as an evolution of Marie's connection to lightning, and gave Angela a way to make Infinite Spears. Glad you liked the duet! I was working on trying not to make it too sappy, but still fluffy, and I hope I succeeded. Thanks for the review and happy New Year!
Guest, thanks! I'm trying to keep everything in balance, but it's not easy sometimes. Glad to see the work is paying off. Happy New Year!
Em-Wing, thanks so much! I appreciate it! Happy New Year and thanks for the review!
Disclaimer: I don't own Soul Eater.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Love, War, and Test Scores
"Paralyzed," Shinigami repeated, frowning at Angela from over the other side of the mirror. "Is that how you'd describe it?"
"It felt like my arm went numb," said Angela. "I lost all the feeling in my fingers for an hour." She flexed her hand now, frowning at the tingling feeling that still radiated from her fingertips all the way up to her spine. "I'm still feeling it now."
It had been almost five hours since her and Shelley's confrontation with the Assassin. The base that they had defended had long since between swarmed by DWMA's intelligence agency, and the two of them had been whisked away to the relative safety and comfort of the main West Asia base. Now, she lounged on a low cushion in an empty corner of the base, her hand mirror in her free hand so that she could report back in.
"Shelley?" Shinigami asked, glancing off to the left where her partner was waiting, sitting on a similar cushion just within the shot. "Do you have anything to add?"
"It was definitely a wavelength attack," said Shelley, adjusting her glasses. "Similar to my father's, but with roughly the same amount of power compressed into a smaller area of effect."
"Would you say that this…Paralyzing Wavelength is likely how she killed the guards in East Asia?"
Angela turned the mirror towards Shelley in response, passing the question on to her. Stein had returned from his trip to Japan with findings that confirmed Azusa's initial report, except for one thing. The corpses had appeared uninjured internally and externally, aside from one minor detail that anyone else might have missed—a suspicious looking bruise on the back of some of the corpses' necks.
"It's possible," Shelley said, launching immediately into field medic mode. "The Assassin's wavelength seems to stop all neural activity in the affected area. A direct hit to the brain stem would almost certainly result in death."
"Thank you," said Shinigami, nodding gravely. "Anything else to report?"
Angela thought of the woman's empty eyes, the dispassionate way with which she had attacked them, apparently unconcerned with her own life and safety, and shivered. "Nothing important," she said. "Only that…she didn't seem entirely there. Like she wasn't aware of what she was doing. I don't—I don't think she's entirely sane. I'd call it madness except—."
Except there didn't seem to be anything there at all, no one behind the mask. Although that in itself could be considered a very specific, very particular kind of madness. Shinigami paused for a moment as he considered that.
"I'll…take that into account," he said, after the pause. "Good work, both of you. Stay there until you've rested, and then return to Death City. We can discuss your next assignment when you arrive."
"Shinigami-sama," said Shelley, "if I can make a request?"
Angela looked over at her, frowning in concern, but Shelley's eyes were fixed on the mirror. Shinigami turned towards her, brows rising.
"Yes?" he asked.
"The search for Micah Cole," Shelley said. "If you can spare us, I'd like to be assigned to that team."
Angela's mouth to argue, but she closed it quickly, instead watching her partner with some concern. Shelley wasn't looking at her, her eyes fixed on Shinigami-sama. Her expression was calm, but there was a fervent, almost fanatical need in her gold eyes as she waited for his response. They might be enemies now, but once upon a time, Shelley and Micah had been lovers, and Angela didn't like seeing what Micah's betrayal had done to her, didn't like seeing what it was doing to her now.
Shinigami seemed to be thinking along the same lines, because he watched her for a moment before looking away.
"I'll…consider it," he finally said. "Get some rest, and then come back to Death City. We can talk while you're here."
Before Shelley could say anything more, before she could open her mouth to argue, the line went dead, and Shinigami's face was replaced by their own.
Last year, Rei might have said that fighting in the Death Festival tournament was the most terrifying part of his school year. Since then, he had trained almost constantly, gaining the strength, skill, and, more importantly, confidence to be able to say that that simply wasn't true anymore. The tournament wasn't scary. It was only another fight, another series of fights, not that much different from one of his missions and, in all actuality, much less dangerous.
What was terrifying was the specter that loomed on the horizon after the tournament, the true terror of the DWMA school year.
The Ultimate Written Exam.
Rei flipped through his notes with an almost fevered intensity, sitting cross-legged in front of the sleek black coffee table in Vayne and Clark's living room. Morgan sat across from him with her legs folded neatly beneath her, paging through her own notes at a slower pace, but with the same single-minded intensity. Occasionally, Rei looked up to shoot her a glance, scowling as he noted the utter calm in her expression, the steady way with which her dark eyes moved over the page, her lips moving slowly as she read the words aloud to herself.
He flipped the page harder, paper crinkling loudly with the movement, and he thought he saw Morgan's eyes flip upward towards him, thought he saw her lips quirk up in a hint of smile before he turned back to her own reading. He liked Morgan and cared about her deeply as a friend, enough to keep her secret safe.
But she had gotten the top spot in the exam last year, and he'd be damned if he let it happen again.
To his left, Ayame flopped on her back on the couch, oblivious to their rivalry as she held her notebook high over her head and flipped through the pages, apparently unconcerned with the fact that the single most important exam of the year was in two days. But at least she was doing better than Clark, who wasn't studying at all, or than Cassie, who had excused herself from their study session an hour earlier and had left the room with a giggle and a grin on her face.
"I can't believe she's still with him," said Clark, turning the page on a section of his notes that he hadn't even read. "She's going to fail her exam."
Vayne frowned in annoyance, but didn't look up from where he was scribbling something down onto a pad of paper next to him. "Uh-huh. You should study."
"I am studying," said Clark, scowling at Vayne before flipping the page again. He looked down at the words in silence for a few moments before looking back up. "She's going to the Anniversary Ball with him too!" he said. "As a date! It isn't even the kind of dance that you bring dates to."
"Uh-huh."
"I can't even get a date for the ball!" said Clark, sitting up and flipping the page with more fury.
Vayne dropped his pen. "Oh, will you give it a rest already?!" he asked, sitting up and running a hand through his hair in frustration. "I'm trying to study, Clark. We're all trying to study. If you want a date to the ball so badly, freaking go out and get one!"
Clark stared at Vayne for a moment, his eyes wide. He blinked, comprehension slowly beginning to dawn on his face. His eyes lit up, his hand reaching from his phone. "Great idea, Vayne! I'll ask Rhythm! I don't think she hates me anymore. Maybe she'll go with me!"
Vayne's eyes widened. "Wait, Clark, that's not what I—!"
Clark ignored him, springing to his feet and running off to his room down the hall. The door closed on the rest of Vayne's sentence, the sound of its slamming echoing through the sparsely furnished apartment. Vayne stared after him, his hand extended, then slowly let it fall.
"Forget Cassie," Vayne muttered, looking back at his notes. "He's the one who's going to fail the exam."
"And get shot down," Ayame added, looking over at Vayne from her notes. "Majorly."
"Yeah, tell me something I don't know," said Vayne, running a hand over his face. "You don't even have to bring dates to the Anniversary Ball. It's more of a partner thing."
"Jealous, Vaynie-poo?" Ayame asked, her eyes twinkling as she leaned her head over the edge of the seat and looked at him upside down.
Vayne threw an eraser at her. "Not on your life," he said. "I just don't want to deal with the fallout."
"Well, start stocking up on the RadAway, because the apocalypse is coming," said Ayame, looking back at her notes.
"Can you guys be quiet for a second?" Rei asked, looking up. "I'm trying to understand this part."
"Killjoy," Ayame muttered, although she shifted so that her head was resting on the seat of the couch again, turned away from Vayne.
"Want me to teach it to you, Rei?" Morgan asked, looking up at him with a glint in her eye and the tiniest hint of a smirk on her lips.
"No," said Rei. "No thank you. I've got it." He scowled, picking up his notes and shifting so that he was turned slightly away from her.
"Suit yourself," said Morgan, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. She looked back at her own notes, continuing to read in that infuriating, sedate pace.
It was official. Vayne Damocles was going to murder his partner.
Just walk right up to him and 'oops, my arm slipped. Huh, that's funny. Haven't accidentally transformed in a long time.' He had it all planned out in his head, including the way he would explain it to Shinigami-sama ('don't you remember what a cute kid I was? I would never do a thing like that'). He even had his back-up escape route planned out (cut straight through the city walls, head to Vegas, and join a circus), because as it turned out, being unable to study the day before the biggest exam of the year because Clark was too busy monologuing about his inability to get one single girl from their class to go to the dance with him gave Vayne a lot of time to plot murder.
He was on the verge of either getting up and stabbing Clark with a pencil or breaking down and sending Morgan a text to 'please, please, please just go on a pity date with him and I will give you whatever you want' when a knock on the door cut Clark's tirade short, and gave Vayne a much-needed excuse to jump to his feet and get away from his partner before he murdered someone.
"What?" he asked, swinging the door open and looking straight at the very confused, slightly concerned mailman who waited behind it.
"Package…" the mailman said, holding a box out. "For, uh, Clark Greysteil?"
Of course it would be for him. Because hey, Vayne's grades didn't matter, and Vayne's lack of sleep didn't matter, as long as Clark got to be the center of attention. Vayne scowled, grabbing the clipboard from the mailman and signing for the package before kicking the door shut behind him, walking back into the living room.
He swore, if Clark decided to say one more thing about how Rhyme didn't want to go to the dance with him or how Skye had called him an ass or how it was so unfair that Cassie had a boyfriend, this package was about to discover its hidden potential as a projectile.
Thankfully, Clark seemed to sense his partner's mood, because his eyes flicked to the package, and he wasn't looking at his phone at all. "What's that?" he asked.
"Package for you," Vayne said, frowning as he looked down at the return address. "From…your family."
He tossed it at Clark, but slightly gentler than he'd been planning to earlier, mollified somewhat by the sight of the return address. Clark was never in a good mood after hearing from his family. Vayne sat back down in front of his notes, hoping that he could snatch a few minutes of silence while Clark opened it, but he looked up, curious in spite of himself.
"What is it?" he asked, watching as Clark cut through the tape. "For your birthday?" Clark's birthday was a few weeks from now, not far.
"Looks like," Clark said, drawing out an envelope. His expression changed as he read it, and he cringed. "Oh, look," he said, flatly, "country club membership. That's great, except I live in the desert. And I don't golf. And even if I did golf…I live in the desert."
"Uh, well…it's a big box?" Vayne offered, scratching the back of his neck, his anger at Clark momentarily forgotten. "Maybe there's something else in it?"
Clark frowned, looking back into the box. "Socks," he said, making a face. "Argyle. Do I look like the kind of guy who wears argyle? Don't answer that," he added, as Vayne started looking him up and down appraisingly. He set the socks aside and started rifling through the packing paper. "Please be money," he muttered under his breath. "Please be money, please be money…"
He turned the box upside down, but the only things that fell out were brown paper and what looked like a pair of striped pajamas. Clark grimaced, picking the pajamas up and setting them on the couch next to the socks. "You don't think the orphanage can use any of this stuff, do you?" he asked, sweeping the paper away.
"I don't know," said Vayne, pretending to give the presents a critical look. "We don't normally take in middle-aged white men."
Clark made a face, giving the presents another look. "What is wrong with them?" he muttered under his breath, before picking up his phone again.
Vayne watched him, tempted to not say anything, but his eyes drifted towards the packages again and the question drifted out of his mouth. "You know, I've been meaning to ask. What's up with you and your family anyway?"
Clark went silent, slowly putting the phone back down. With his face turned away from Vayne, Vayne couldn't see his expression, but he could tell by the sudden slump in Clark's shoulders that he'd touched a nerve. He stood in silence, waiting for his partner to speak.
"Long…story," Clark finally said, looking up. "Come on. Help me get this stuff out of the way. We need to study for this test."
Ayame Star had a very specific, tried and tested routine for the night before major examinations or test. Step One, which usually happened sometime around ten, was to clean up her room and unroll her futon, so her notebooks ended up stuffed back into her book bag and all of the snack wrappers that she had accumulated during her three-hour long studying/anime watching/working out/video game playing session got thrown out to make room for her bed. Then she unrolled the futon, brought out her blanket and favorite star-shaped pillow, and laid them on top of the mattress.
That was it for Step One. 'Step Two: Get ready for bed' was the next step and the easiest, so Ayame slipped on a tank top and a pair of shorts, undid her hair from its side ponytail and brushed it out, then walked past the light that filtered up from downstairs (where her partner was still frantically studying), to brush her teeth. She hummed slightly to herself, taking her time in front of the bathroom mirror and frowning as she glanced at the steps that led down into the living room.
Ayame spat into the sink, rinsing her mouth out and dabbing at her face with a towel as she narrowed her eyes, preparing herself for Step Three, the most frustrating step of all.
Get Rei to go to sleep.
She set her toothbrush back into its holder, taking a deep breath, then strode purposefully down the stairs, her fists clenched and her jaw set in determination. This time, she didn't bother with niceties, just picked Rei up from where he was crouched over the coffee table, slinging him over her shoulder like a sack of rice as she made her way back up the stairs.
Rei thrashed in protest, a knee slamming into her shoulder as he made a frantic grab for the papers that floated in the air in front of his face.
"No, Ayame, wait!" he said. "I'm almost done—I just need to look at one more—!"
She ignored him, marching right back up the stairs and pushing open the door to Rei's room with her free hand. She heaved him off of her, dumping him unceremoniously onto the bed. Rei immediately scrambled up so that he was sitting, attempting to make a dash downstairs.
"No," Ayame said, cutting him off.
"But—," Rei began.
"No. Stay. Sleep," said Ayame. "That's final."
Rei blinked owlishly up at her and she turned around, turning off the lights and shutting the door behind her. She walked back to her room, hoping that that would be the end of it, but before she could fully close the door behind her, Rei was out the door and down the stairs like a rocket, heading for the pile of discarded notes.
Ayame let out a sigh of exasperation, rolling her eyes and giving her waiting futon one last longing look before making her way back downstairs.
"Come on, just five more minutes!" whined Rei a few minutes later as Ayame trudged back up the stairs, this time dragging him behind her by his ankles. Rei scrambled to keep his hands on the notes strewn across the floor in front of him, papers spilling from his grasp. "You don't understand! If I don't take the top spot this year, my family will be disappointed, and it's just going to be awful, and everyone's going to hate me, and—."
Ayame scowled, coming to a stop as she reached the hallway just outside of Rei's room. She reached down, picking him up by his collar and lifting his head slightly so that he was facing her. "Look, no one's going to hate you," she said. "It's just a test. If you don't know it by now, you're not going to know it in five minutes. So don't make me repeat myself. Go. To. Sleep."
Rei stared at her for long enough that Ayame wondered whether all that studying had actually fried his brain before he finally nodded slowly, blinking at her. "Alright, Ayame," he said. "I'll go to sleep."
"Finally," said Ayame, releasing him and stepping away. She waited just long enough to make sure that Rei was actually walking into his room, that the light was no longer shining from beneath the door, then turned back into her own bedroom and closed the door behind her. Ayame let out a sigh of relief, leaning against the wall for a moment, then smiled, walking towards her own futon.
She was just lifting the blanket to slide under it when she heard Rei's door open again.
Ayame let out a growl of frustration, heading back into the hallway. Rei's eyes widened as she stormed downstairs, dropping the stack of papers he was holding and raising his arms to cover his head. "I just wanted to check something, I swear—Ayame? Ayame!"
Ayame ignored him, grabbing him by the back of his shirt and dragging him back up the stairs. Desperate times, desperate measures.
She dragged Rei into her room and slammed the door shut, tossing him onto the futon. He sat there, momentarily stunned, while she flicked the lights off and got in on the other side, lying on her stomach and throwing an arm and leg over him so that he couldn't get away. Rei tensed, turning so red that he practically glowed.
"A-Ayame—," he stammered out. "Wh-what are you—?"
"Making sure you sleep," Ayame mumbled into her sheets, turning her face away from him so that he couldn't see the redness starting to spread across her face as well. "You brought this on yourself, Rei. Now shut up and quit squirming, or I'll smother you with Mr. Starfish."
She held her gold star-shaped pillow up for emphasis with her free hand, lowering it back down to her other side. Rei was silent for a while before he spoke, as if he was trying to work out what he should say first.
"Mr. Starfish?!" he finally settled on.
"Shut up! I was five!" She twisted around, releasing her hold on him long enough to whap him over the top of the head with the star pillow. Rei cringed, closing his eyes and turning away. Ayame whirled around, pulling away from him entirely and scooting over to the other side of the futon, her back towards him as she hugged Mr. Starfish close to her chest.
"Just go to sleep," she said, mumbling into the pillow. Her face started to burn, with a heat that she could feel, but as much as she was starting to regret this, Ayame had never been one to back down. She felt Rei shift, scooting over to the other side of the futon and widening the gap between them. "And don't even think about getting up," she added. "I will know."
"Yeah, yeah, I get it," said Rei, turning onto his side so that their backs were facing each other. He exhaled, and despite all odds, she felt him finally, reluctantly start to relax. Which was fan-freaking-tastic, because now she was the one who wasn't sure she was going to be getting any sleep. "Good night, Ayame."
"Yeah," she replied, her tone clipped. "Night."
She waited until his breathing evened out before she finally let herself relax, hugging her pillow closer and settling into an uneasy sleep.
Rei woke up to sunlight in his eye, a knee in his back, an elbow in his face, and an incredibly annoying beeping sound coming from the next room. He opened his eyes, groaning, and shoved Ayame's arm and leg away from him unceremoniously, throwing the blanket off of himself. Ayame let out a grunt of annoyance, flopping back over onto her other side.
That was when he realized where he was. And then a second later, what time it was.
"Ayame!" Rei said, placing both hands on her arm to shake her awake. "We're going to be late for the exam!"
"…mpossible…" Ayame murmured, stretching out sleepily and pillowing her head on her arm. "…set an alarm…"
"Oh, yeah?" Rei asked, grabbing her alarm clock from its place on the floor and pushing it at her. "Explain this, then."
Ayame blinked blearily at it, pushing her head up. Then her eyes widened and she sat up.
"Crap!" she said, staring at him with wide eyes.
"I know!" said Rei, the two of them scrambling to their feet.
He ran out the door and into his room, taking a moment to shut off the frantic beeping of his alarm clock as he tried to find a suitable uniform to wear. From across the hall, he heard the sounds of Ayame moving quickly as well, drawers opening and slamming shut. He quickly pulled off his sleeping clothes, finding a shirt and pair of pants that he was 90% sure were clean and pulling them on. He ran his hands through his hair in an attempt to comb it and was just struggling with his tie when Ayame burst into his room, fully dressed now and with a panicked expression on her face. She grabbed him by the elbow.
"Never mind that, just grab it and go! We can still make it!"
"Cloak of Shadows?" Rei asked as he followed her out the door, grabbing his uniform jacket and slinging it over his arm as he tried to step into his shoes as quickly as possible.
"Gonna have to be," said Ayame, tugging on her boots. "Come on, hurry!"
"I can't believe you didn't set an alarm!" said Rei as he followed her out the door, pausing only a moment to make sure it was locked behind him.
"Yeah well, you know what, smartass, I had bigger things on my mind," said Ayame, scowling at him from the sidewalk and stamping her foot impatiently. "What are you waiting for? Get down here!"
Rei didn't waste breath arguing, leaping down the steps that led to the sidewalk and holding a hand out for her. She transformed, the familiar weight of the Cloak settling around him. Before he even had to tell her what to do, the kunai on either side of the cloak shot outward, sinking into the buildings on either side of the street and acting as a slingshot as they launched him up into the sky.
They made it just as the last bell was ringing, disheveled and out of breath. Rei dropped into his seat next to Vayne with an exhausted sigh, slumping down onto his folded arms. Beside him, Ayame exhaled, tilting her head back as she sprawled out onto her seat.
"Rough morning?" Vayne asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Just shut it," Rei said, slowly pushing himself up and rubbing at his eyes. If he stopped to think too long about the circumstances of their morning, and what Vayne would say if he found out exactly where he had spent the night, he was going to get distracted. He couldn't afford to get distracted, especially not with Morgan seated behind him and watching him with a smug look on her face, impeccably dressed and without a hair out of place. She already had her pencil out, tapping it lightly against her desk as Maka began distributing the exams and answer sheets.
Rei scowled at her, then pulled his own pencil out as well, taking a deep breath. He could do this. He'd been studying all week. He knew the answers.
He met Maka's eyes as she handed him his exam, his mother pausing to give him an encouraging smile before moving down the rows. It didn't help his mood any. He didn't want to think about what she would say if he failed this test.
Except it didn't matter, because he would not fail. And he definitely wasn't going to lose to Morgan two years running. He exchanged looks with Vayne and Clark as each of them got their test papers, with Cassie, who had her headphones on and was humming to herself, all but ignoring Maka as she set the exam down in front of her, and finally with Ayame, who had her pencil up and was hunched down over her test, wearing an excited grin and a look of determination that she usually reserved for a challenging sparring partner.
All of them were ready. He turned to the front of the room as his mother came to a stop and faced them, tucking the extra exams and answer sheets beneath the crook of her arm.
"Remember," she said. "Absolutely no cheating. I will know, and you're not going to like the consequences." She watched them sternly for a moment, making sure they understood, before her expression softened and she smiled. "If you've studied, I know you'll do fine. Good luck. Begin."
Rei took a deep breath, flipping his exam over.
Ayame didn't understand any of this.
Alright, so that wasn't fair. She understood the easy questions: "A sound soul dwells within a sound [blank]…' and the like. Those weren't too bad. It was rest of the exam that she seemed to be having a hard time with, although she could have sworn that she studied last night. Or maybe she'd taken a break to play video games. Yeah, in retrospect, that had probably been it.
Okay, that wasn't too much of a problem. Just because she didn't know the answer, didn't mean Rei didn't. And Maka-sensei had said not to cheat, but Ayame was a ninja. As far as she understood it, the point of getting an education at the DWMA was to become better at what you already were, and the best way for her to be a better ninja was to figure out how to outwit Maka's Soul Perception.
It was perfect reasoning. They should have made her the teacher.
She smiled, glancing at Maka-sensei and making sure that the teacher had her eyes fixed somewhere else in the room before casually letting her eyes drift to the people sitting next to her, in this case Rei. Not at his paper, just at him. She could look at her partner, couldn't she? That wasn't against the rules.
Rei was writing furiously, scribbling out answers left and right. He was hunched over his exam like he was trying to beat it into submission, which sadly didn't give her a chance to glance at the answer. Behind him, Morgan continued writing at a steady pace, but she was sitting above Ayame, so the angle was all wrong. Cassie actually seemed to be done and was goofing off with her test paper turned over and her eyes staring off into space. Clark and Vayne were too far away from her to see, and anyway, Clark was looking at his test with a look of despair that she recognized. Vayne looked pretty calm, but she couldn't get a good look at his test over Rei.
So there were no easy answers to be gleaned just by looking. At least none that she trusted. That was fine. She could improvise. After all, what was the point of her and Rei developing that whole secret language if it didn't allow the two of them to talk covertly?
Ayame shifted over to the left, nudging Rei's knee with hers. He jerked, sitting up, and in the half a second that he used to turn towards her, Ayame executed a quick movement with her hands, making it look like she was just fixing her hair.
Help me out with number 7? she signed. Or at least she tried to, but their hand signals weren't all that sophisticated, so it actually came out as more: Help 7?
Still not that hard to understand. She glanced at Rei out of the corner of her eye, expecting to see him trying to find a way to give her the answer. Instead, he just scowled at her, shifting his paper so that she couldn't see it and turning away.
Her mouth dropped open. She nudged him harder, forcing him to look back at her.
Help 7? she signed, angrier this time.
No, he signed back. He inclined his head towards Maka, then looked back at his work, as if to say no cheating.
Alright, fair enough. Maybe hand signals would be too obvious. After all, Maka-sensei was Rei's mother—she would know something was off the minute he started acting up. No problem. She could work around it. She picked up her pencil, tapping out a rhythm on the corner of her page.
M-O-R-S-E-?
Rei frowned at her in annoyance, then tapped out a reply.
N-O
And then, as he turned away: S-H-O-U-L-D H-A-V-E S-T-U-D-I-E-D
Ayame bit her lip, then set her hands flying. The simple language that she and Rei had built wasn't designed to handle anything more sophisticated than a handful of words, but she made it work, filling in the gaps in her mind.
I [am the] only reason [that] you [even got any] sleep last night, you [two-faced little bastar—
"Ayame?" Maka asked, frowning up at her from the bottom of the classroom. "Is something wrong?"
Ayame's eyes widened and she snapped back up, turning to face Maka. "Oh, um…no, Maka-sensei," she said. "There's just a—a fly!" She clapped her hands above her, then a couple more times beside her head. "It's, um, kind of annoying, so I'm just trying to get rid of it and—."
Rei clapped his hands in front of her face.
"There," he said, going back to his work. "No more fly."
Traitor, Ayame signed. They didn't technically have a hand signal for that, but she made a rude gesture with a finger of one hand that she thought got the point across quite nicely. She scowled, looking back at her own work and angrily scribbling down an answer.
If I fail, she thought, glancing at her partner. It will be totally your fault.
Rei, damn him, didn't seem to be at all concerned by that.
The bell rang throughout the school, finally signaling the end of the Ultimate Written Exam. Stein stood in the hallway as the doors to the E.A.T. classrooms opened, filling the halls with students. In one hand, he held the report that Angela and Shelley had submitted, based on their encounter with the Assassin. He adjusted his glasses, the light shining off of them as his eyes moved over the wavelength assessment again.
"Paralyzing Wavelength, hmm…?" he muttered to himself.
Stein looked up, watching the groups of students passing by, brightly colored souls flaring around him. His eyes landed on a boy following a group of five others out of Class Moonless Night's classroom. Blond hair, glasses, his own version of a wavelength attack.
Stein lowered the report as the boy passed, disappearing back down the hallway.
"87?!" Clark asked, staring at the results board with a crestfallen expression on his face. "But—how? That's impossible! I studied so hard!"
Beside him, Vayne and Ayame looked at the results board, decidedly unamused. Vayne's own score had been a 63, Ayame's, 57.
"I hate him," Vayne said, his arms folded.
"I feel you," Ayame said, nodding solemnly. "Cass, what happened to you?"
She turned towards the girl standing next to her, who had had to shift over to the end of the board to find her name. Cassandra Crane had come out of that exam with a 24, a solid failure. That would have been surprising considering she had the sort of eidetic memory that let her remember everything she read, if not for the fact that she was Cassandra Crane.
"I didn't know there were three more pages," said Cassie with a flippant smile. "No big deal, right?"
"That's kind of a big deal!" Vayne said, as Cassie walked off and slipped her headphones back on.
"How bad is it?" Rei asked from his spot just over Ayame's shoulder, his eyes closed and his face turned away from the board. "Can I look?"
"Yeah, yeah, you can look," said Ayame, frowning at him in impatience. "Go on. It's not gonna bite."
Rei hesitantly removed his hand from over his eyes and looked up at the board. Then continued looking up as he searched for his name, and up and up and up…
1) Rei Evans – 99 points
His eyes widened. "I did it!" he said. "I got first place. Take that, Morgan!"
"Not so fast, genius," said Vayne, pointing at the board. "Take another look."
Rei frowned, giving the board a closer look. Now that he was no longer looking for his name, he noticed the name directly below his.
1) Rei Evans – 99 points
1) Morgan Fay – 99 points
Rei blinked. "We…tied?" he asked.
"Looks like," said Morgan, pulling herself away from her own study of the results board. She looked over at Rei, a smile on her face as she extended a hand out to him. "I can live with that. Can't you, Rei?"
"I…I guess I can," said Rei, reaching out and taking her hand. He returned the smile, their eyes meeting for a moment before each of them let go, their hands falling away from each other.
"Still," Morgan said. "I wonder what we got wrong."
"Me too," said Rei. "Do you want to go find out?"
Morgan gave the board another glance before nodding. "Sure," she said. "Maka-sensei should still be in the faculty office."
"Anyone else?" Rei asked, looking over the group as he and Morgan turned to leave.
"Nah, I'm good," said Ayame, looking at her score. "I mean, I guess it's pretty average, right? It's not too awful. Better than what my dad made when he was in school."
Rei frowned. "Wasn't your dad famous for failing everything?"
"Ex-actly!"
"I'll pass," said Vayne, when Rei glanced at him. "We're just going to get them back in a couple of days anyway."
"Suit yourself," said Rei with a shrug. "Clark?"
"No…" said Clark, still staring at his score and at his rank of 13th…out of 123. "My life is over anyway. I'm just going to go die…"
Rei frowned as Clark slunk away from the board, glancing at Vayne. "What's up with him?"
Vayne shrugged in response, watching as Clark walked away.
Clark sat on one of the benches that lined the school grounds, his phone in his hands. He sighed, scrolling through the list of messages there, every single one of them rejections. He'd been hoping to at least do well on the exam to make up for it, but now here he was, thirteenth in the class and still dateless. Why was he so hopeless? He flipped back through the list, wondering if he should just cave and ask Morgan. They were friends, so she might even say yes, but he didn't want to be a pity date.
What was wrong with him anyway? Was he just that unlikeable? No, he thought people liked him just fine. Everyone seemed to be alright hanging out with him. He was even class representative.
Oh God, was he ugly? He was ugly, wasn't it? That had to be it. Or maybe he smelled—
"…Clark?" asked a voice from in front of him. "Is something wrong?"
He looked up. A girl stood in front of him, with long blond hair reaching down to her waist and light green eyes. She was dressed in a school uniform, two thin braids reaching around the back of her head to keep her hair out of her face. He blinked at her, and then his eyes widened in recognition, flipping back through the list of names in his phone.
Ophelia! Of course! He had her number, except for some strange reason, probably because of her involvement in the haunted house last year, he had it saved as 'Stage Manager'. He opened his mouth, about to ask her to the dance, then quickly closed it, remembering the reactions he'd gotten from everyone else. He looked away.
"Uh—nothing," he said. "Everything's fine."
"Come on," said Ophelia, frowning at him. She crouched down so that the two of them were at eye level. "You can tell me."
"I—well—," he looked around, but her hulking giant of a partner was nowhere to be seen. "—You'll laugh."
Ophelia flashed him a smile. "Try me," she said.
"I—Ican'tgetadatetothedance," he blurted out, all the words coming out in a rush. Ophelia blinked at him, and Clark took a deep breath, continuing on. "I know it's not supposed to be important, but Cassie's got a date and I've asked literally every girl in the class except Morgan because it would be weird and Ayame because come on, she's definitely taken, and—and I guess I haven't asked you, but I'm not asking you, so don't worry, and I—you're laughing. I said you would."
"Sorry," said Ophelia, shaking her head and getting her giggles under control. She looked back at him, studying him with renewed interest through lashes that seemed entirely too long, and Clark felt the heat rise to his face. How had he not noticed that Ophelia was beautiful?
Oh, right. Yorick. Mr. 'I'll-grind-your-bones-to-make-my-bread'. He remembered now.
"So are you?" Ophelia asked after a while.
"Am I what?" Clark asked.
"Going to ask me to the dance?"
"Um—well—," He looked around, half-expecting Yorick to jump out at him from the shrubbery. "—Are—are you going to be mad?"
"No," said Ophelia.
"Is-Is Yorick going to pound me into paste?"
"Only if I tell him to," said Ophelia, smiling.
Clark stared at Ophelia for a long moment, considering, before finally taking a deep breath. He sniffed, trying not to make himself look so teary-eyed. "Then…will you go to the dance with me, Ophelia?"
"Hmm…" Ophelia frowned for a moment as if considering it, then turned back to him, "…okay."
Clark stared at her. "Just like that?" he asked.
"Yeah," said Ophelia, standing up. "Just like that. You know, you're pretty cute when you're not trying so hard to be cool, iinchou."
She threw him a smile over her shoulder as she turned, walking away.
Omake
"Alright," said Maka, rifling through the stack of exams in front of her. "Here's your exam, Morgan. And here's yours, Rei."
Rei took his exam from her, frowning at the look she gave him as she handed it over, then walked away to do other work. He didn't understand why his mother looked so confused about his score. After all, 99 was great for the Ultimate Exam, and he had tied for first place with Morgan. He didn't think his mom would be so petty as to be disappointed in him because he had missed one point, would she?
The question bothered him, so he turned towards Morgan first.
"Which one did you get wrong?" he asked.
"Problem 79," Morgan said. "The one about resonance chains."
"Oh yeah, that one's complicated," said Rei, flipping through his exam. "I'm pretty sure I got that one wr—wait, no, I got it right? What did I get wrong, then?"
"Check the first page," Maka said, looking over her shoulder with that odd expression again. Rei frowned in thought, flipping back to the first page of the test. He glanced over it, at first not seeing any errors. Then he realized what he had done wrong, and his face paled.
A sound [blank] dwells within a sound [blank] and a sound [blank].
It was a multiple choice question, the easiest in the test. The right answer was: a) soul; mind; body. And his answer?
b) spaceship; radio; squirrel
He stared at his exam, and all the heat rose to his face. He must have circled the wrong answer somehow, but how—
"Problem?" Morgan asked, looking up over her own exam.
"N-No," said Rei, quickly lowering his own test before she could see. "N-No problem at all!"
