Spoilers: after the Anime and sort of from Manga chapter 62/3. You have been warnied.

Warning(s): Possible swearing, mild/medium gore level potential, fluff.

Pairing(s): SoMa, possibly some TsuStar and/or KidxLizxPatty

Brief: With the Kishin defeated, what new threats will rise up to face the heroes from Shibusen? Will Kid's words of warning when the Kishin was killed come true sooner than they thought? And can the Madness be eliminated completely before it consumes the world?

Disclaimer: Atsushi Okubo owns Soul Eater, not me.

Chapter Two: Return to Shibusen; The Secret is out!

"Are you serious, professor?" Maka asked in awe. Stein smiled, amused by the hopeful look in her eyes.

"Yes, Maka, I am," he nodded. "You have finally succeeded in your goal of making Soul into a Deathscythe."

"YAHOO!" Black Star yipped, punching the air. "With you as a Deathscythe, we'll be unbeatable, Tsubaki!" His partner merely smiled timidly, giggling at the enthusiasm of this news.

"I trust that you are all ready to receive your final souls, yes?" Stein asked. The four Weapons nodded resolutely. "Very well. Spirit, Marie, the cases."

Both Deathscythes nodded and went to a large black safe with an effigy of Lord Death's mask on the front. Both of them took out a gold key attached to a chain around their necks and inserted them into the eye-holes of the mask. They turned in opposing directions simultaneously before Spirit then gripped the middle tooth and pulled it in a levering direction upwards. The locks slid back into the door, allowing it to swing open, revealing a number of silver metal cases within the metal exterior. Each Weapon took out a case on the top of the stack, then shut the door and moved over to the desk which had been set beside the safe. The younger Weapons were ushered over, Liz and Patty to Marie while Soul and Tsubaki went to Stein.

"It took us quite a while to find these," Marie said with a smile, stepping aside to show two pink souls in the case. Both had a trio of spikes on the top in a symmetrical arrangement. "We figured that Kid would prefer you two to have souls as close to one another as possible, so we had to find and claim the souls of twin witches Dakura and Ryu. You've earned these, girls!"

Liz and Patty smiled at one another, then to Kid, before accepting the souls through willing them into their hands, a method they had learnt to use to avoid having to be in weapon form to collect souls. A pink light coursed over them for a moment or two, subsiding as quickly as it had appeared, then they returned to Kid's side.

"Tsubaki," Spirit said, taking out an orange soul with a pair of yellow wings sticking out of it. "This is the soul of the witch Tsunada. She was a tricky one, but I think you will do well with it."

The tall Weapon bowed respectfully and took the soul, taking it in as the Thompsons had, an orange glow running over her briefly before she returned to a now very noisy Black Star to calm him down. Spirit turned to Soul.

"We managed to recover this from the epicentre of the blast when the Kishin was destroyed," he told the albino Weapon. "It's Arachne's soul, so I'm sure you can appreciate the power of it." He gave the last soul, which was light purple and had eight legs hanging limp out of the back, to the red-eyed male. "And I swear, Soul Eater, if you dare touch my little girl, I'll-!"

Maka threw a thick book at her father's face, cutting him off in mid-rant. While he pouted and whined about how his daughter despised him, Soul grinned and turned to his frustrated Meister, walking over to her with the Soul in hand.

"Looks like we did it, Maka," he said. She smiled back at him.

"I did promise to make you a Deathscythe, didn't I?" she replied coyly. Soul chuckled and raised the soul above his head.

"Well then, here goes."

He dropped it into his mouth and swallowed it whole, a sigh of satisfaction escaping his mouth as it always did when he collected a soul. Then, a bright purple light bathed both he and his Meister, the power of the soul coursing into his own and throughout his veins. When it subsided, he grinned, the feeling of power new and foreign to him, but it definitely felt good.

"Well then, are you all ready to return to class?" Lord Death asked. The students nodded. "Excellent! We will let you know if we detect any trace of those beings who aided the spread of Madness! Good to see you again, kids!"

When the seven students were gone, Stein turned to a still snivelling Spirit.

"Oh, please," he said monotonously. "Are you still crying about being rejected by your sixteen year old daughter?"

"No, it's not that, Stein," the red-head sniffed, rubbing his eyes with his sleeve. "I just thought of how much like her mother she is. My little girl's growing up fast, Stein!"

"And you're depressed because you've realised that if you hadn't been cheating on Kami for so long you would have seen her grow up?" the grey-haired Meister questioned, rotating the screw in his head a quarter turn while Spirit teared up again.

"No I am!" he whined, bursting into tears again, much to everyone's annoyance.

Crescent Moon Classroom

"Yahoo! The great Black Star has finally graced you all with his magnificence!" the blue-haired assassin yelled, bursting through the door ahead of the more slow-moving group.

"Jeez, can he never be quiet?" Maka fumed, scowling at the door while Tsubaki sighed at her Meister's outburst.

"Not really," she replied. "He's been getting better on missions, though, so there's still hope."

"I am so big, I made my partner into a Deathscythe! Bow down to me, mortals!"

"Great, now he's claiming to be omnipotent again," It was Kid's turn to sigh. "Sometimes I wonder what he would be like if he could sit still and stay silent for five seconds."

"Wouldn't be Black Star, that's for sure," Soul shrugged. The six remaining Meisters and Weapons walked into the classroom, which had numerous students talking animatedly between one another, but no sign of a teacher. Then again, Stein was meant to be there, so it was to be expected by the newly returned Meisters and Weapons.

"Is it true, guys?" Kilik asked, walking over with his Weapons a short way behind. "Did you really get made into Deathscythes?"

"That's right," Kid nodded. "Father obviously has something important planned, else he would not have done something like this." Just then, the sound of wheel clattering against the floor became apparent just before a certain grey-haired professor burst through the doorway, the chair clipping the threshold and sending him sprawling on his back.

"Alright, class," he said from his position, taking a text book from his deep coat pocket, thumbing through the pages as he went on. "I assume Black Star has not destroyed my classroom, so I'd like you to take you seats and turn to page 308, The Anatomy of a Mountain Goat. Hopefully we shall have a specimen next week, so we had better brush up on the anatomic build of it."

Great, another dissection, Maka thought.

As the professor went on, scrawling the notes on each part of the animal's body, several paper aeroplanes landed on her desk, one even jabbing her in the head. She glared at the offending items, rubbing her head a little as she retrieved the paper. Glancing at the sheets of white, she realised that they had either 'Soul' or 'Maka' written on the wings. Her interest piqued, she picked up one which had her name on it, which happened to be the one which speared her skull, and opened it out. Inside was the picture of a a boy with blonde hair and brown eyes, beside which was a cut off, showing a sword with a double-edged blade and a bronze guard which encircled the hilt. Attached to this was a letter, asking to be her partner. Annoyed that someone would be impertinent enough to throw a letter requesting to partner with her when she had one already, Maka screwed it into a tight ball and placed it on her desk.

The other letters were of the same gist, and each received either the same fate as the first or were torn to shreds swiftly. It was true that she had made Soul into a Deathscythe, but her number of partner requests had never been so high until Black Star had shouted out the news, and that is what angered the young Meister. She was glad that her promise to Soul had been fulfilled, and that her dreams of being like her mother had also been realised, but she was also disappointed that the only reason that people were now calling upon her skills with partner requests was because she had done what Shibusen had been designed for; making a Deathscythe and destroying those who spread Madness over the globe.

By the time that class was over, the partners were covered in paper. Soul discarded his swiftly into the bin, many still unfolded as he already knew what they were. His locker let loose a landslide of further letters from Meisters, all of which he simply glanced at, sighed and removed from his property.

"Hey, Maka, do you have any Sellotape?" he asked, returning to his Meister's side. She frowned.

"Sure, here," she replied, handing it to him. He proceeded to take the reel and smoothed it over the grills on the locker door. "Why on earth did you do that, Soul?"

"These things are doing my head in, and this is the only way they get them in," Soul replied simply.

"So, you don't want to switch partner now that you're a Deathscythe?" she asked, trying ti sound casual.

"Hell no." He paused briefly. "Why? Do you, Maka?"

"What?" Maka sounded hurt that Soul would consider that. "Of course I don't!"

"Good," her Weapon smiled. "It wouldn't be cool for us to ditch each other without letting the other know. Anyway, let's get home before someone else asks us to partner with them."

Maka nodded and followed her Weapon, who had his fingers laced together and behind his head in a look of contented relaxation. Maka blushed a little at the thought of his arms which the pose brought to her mind, but she forced the thoughts away sharply before they could ingrain themselves onto her brain.

Neither of them noticed the small person stood in the shadows, glaring at Maka intently.

The Next Day

Deathscythe Training Grounds

Maka looked up at the door before them. It was huge, at least twelve feet high and five wide. She placed her hand on the cold, black metal, which looked almost like glass due to the smooth, shiny finish, gazing up at the towering skull-mask on the front. This was the door to a room that her papa had taken to once in her time; the Deathscythe Training Grounds. The room itself was only for Deathscythes and their Meisters, and was actually a corridor with multiple rooms, including the Deathscythe Room and a very large, subterranean training ground.

Soul pulled his card from the recesses of his pocket and placed it into the slot on top of the skull to the side of the door. The eyes lit up red and the three teeth popped outwards a little. Likewise, the huge one on the door did the same, the locks peeling away from the frame and into their housings. The heavy panel swung inwards, showing a fairly shadowy corridor with a stone stairway leading downwards, which is where the partners went, coming out into the bright light of the training ground. Black Star stood beside Tsubaki, watching as Kid fired his twin pistols. Hearing the rate of fire, Maka could tell something was different to before about the Weapons.

"What's going on?" she asked. Tsubaki turned and smiled lightly.

"Professor Stein wanted each of us to test our abilities as Deathscythes so that he could tailor practice sessions to suit us," she explained. Said Meister and professor walked up to the group, careful not to interrupt their conversation.

"Have any of you tried your new forms or practised since becoming Deathscythes?" the grey-haired man asked, his eyes falling on the blank faces of his students. "I guess not then. Alright, Kid, come over here a second!"

The young Grim Reaper stopped his shooting and nodded, heading over with his pistols in hand. Maka looked at the twin pistols which the Thompsons took on, and noticed a difference instantly. The pistols no longer had the plain look they used to, now bearing a pair of blue eyes, one on either side, at the end of the barrel near the hammers. Also, the standard looking finish of gun-metal seemed to have brightened into a radiant silver. Aside from these, the pistols were noticeably larger in size, the barrel particularly longer than before, and along the edge of them were the words 'Death Eagle .60'.

"'Death Eagle .60'?" Soul questioned, surprised about the choice of name.

"Yes," Kid nodded. "The calibre of my Weapons went up from .38 to .60, and the Soul Revolutions per second from eighty to two hundred. Even I am surprised by the improvements that becoming a Death-rank Meister has."

"Tsubaki, let's show everyone just how much bigger we are now that you're a Deathscythe!" Black Star whooped, his Weapon nodding and transforming obidiently.

Tsubaki no longer took on the Kusarigama form as standard, instead becoming an ornate looking version of the short-bladed ninja sword. The hilt was wrapped in a dark blue cloth all the way around with a short bronze curved end to it, while a bronze guard took the shape of a five-point star on the other end. The blade was much thicker and longer than before, the silver shimmering in the light and revealing the black markings which wound around the Weapon. When Black Star grabbed the grip, the markings appeared on his right forearm, as if showing that he and Tsubaki were one, and a short cloak of shadows knitted itself from the thin air behind him, looking almost like a superhero's cape, though no one said a word. Stein's eyes fell upon Maka and Soul.

"Now you two," he said. The partners nodded, Maka raising her right hand to her partner and Soul gripping it in his own, a blue glow shining brightly over the Deathscythe as he transformed and obscuring everyone's view of them.

When the smoke cleared, the group stared at the new Weapon state Soul had taken. The staff was the same as before, no real change about it, but the blade and attachment had changed greatly. The sickle-like curved blade was still black and red, but the division was straight, not serrated except for three bites of red into the black section, two triangles obvious and a third section where the binding started. Two diagonal prongs latched onto the blade from the extension of the actual binding, which was an oval with six prongs jutting from it; one on either of the thinner apexes and four longer ones on the other side from the blade, arranged so that one was aimed further downward while the other three jutted in the same direction; opposite to the blade. All of this was in gold, except for the inside of the oval, which had a red-irised eye on either side of the Weapon. Maka swung the non-bladed side of the scythe downwards, exerting their wavelengths with explosive force, proving the power of their bond.

"Excellent," Stein nodded. "I believe I have an important training for you, Maka." Maka cocked her head, confused. "You possess the Grigory type soul, so now that you have a Deathscythe, you should be able to manifest your own wings."

Maka's eyes widened.

"Y- You mean..." she stammered, hardly believing her ears. "I can fly?"

Happy belated New Year, everyone!

Sorry, had to get that out of my system.

I'm happy with how this story is going thus far, but I hope that it takes off a little more than it already has.

Anyway, let me know what you want in the future or what you think of it now with a review; it will be very helpful to me if you could!

Right now, I need to sleep, so goodnight.