Those of you who actually listen to Vocaloid and enjoy it will definitely like this chapter. Because Vocaloid is the shit and I was listening to Rin and Len Kagamine's Dark Vow. Such a great song and story, and I wanted to include it in this chapter.

Hot DAMN it's been a while since an update, eh? Next up: GhostAU Chappie! :^D

I most certainly don't own Soul Eater, Vocaloid, or pizza.

Now please Enjoy~!

"What the shit is Vocaloid?"

"It's an advanced voice synthesizing system that uses human voices as a base to build off of into individual electronically manufactured personas! Soul, I've been saying that since the first time you've asked that question."

"We'll I'm sorry that I can't swallow that atrocity you've been shoving down my throat."

"It's not my fault your vocabulary expanse can be measured with a yardstick."

"See? Can you stop with your nerd jargon and straight up tell me that you're listening to Japanese robots sing?"

"They. Are not. Robots! They have no physical form!"

"They are god damn cyber pop stars and you know it. Just listen to them Maka, they even sound fake."

"You are just an uncultured swine that holds a grudge against electronica and pop. I didn't ask you to steal one of my ear buds, you know!"

Soul pouted, but didn't dislodge the white speaker from his ear. Instead, he chose to casually slide closer to her and withstand the horror that was Japanese pop culture spewing into his ear drums because someone had to teach this woman proper music.

Sipping loudly on his chocolate milkshake, he reached for the shuffle button on Maka's iPod Touch and smirked when he met her halfway there, knowing she would want him to hear more of her cherished guilty pleasure that was Hatsune Miku. She bashfully smiled in thanks and hit shuffle while he finished the rest of his choco-blizzard in nothing resembling moderation. Their hands rested side by side on the food court table, pinkies touching while they pretended to not notice their close contact or the fact that the opposite bench of their table was amazingly unoccupied.

"...This playlist sucks hard and you know it, Maka."

"Does not." She pinches the back of his unsuspecting hand in retaliation, and Soul bites back a cringe. "If you knew what they were saying, you would understand the meaning of the song and its multiple layers much better. It's quite beautiful, in reality."

"Oh, do enlighten me, professor."

With a warning twitch of her nose, Maka continued. "The songs about an angel who falls in love with a mortal girl, however the angel is female. She cannot bring the girl she fancies to love her, so she makes a deal with the devil to become a boy and pursue her love again. In doing so, she has fallen from God's grace and is no longer an angel. But the really interesting part is that–"

And thus she animatedly explained the metaphorical struggle between love and lust while it played into Soul's ear and out of the other, the equivalent of a hollow breeze, if not less. It's not like he could speak, let alone understand Japanese; that skill was under Maka's long list of useless things to offer the world. All Soul wanted to do was look at the strange creature that was Maka Albarn emerge from her prim and proper shell and morph into this excited, passionate, music lover, who didn't care in the least that her voice was the loudest in the semi-filled cafeteria. It became a fond hobby of his when he spotted her a week ago dancing with a mop after hours to her headphones, Death Hut's lighting being her sole spotlight in the midnight-darkened mall. Some Maka-chops and a good laugh later they began to share their musical tastes with one another, switching turns every other day, and sadly, this day was hers.

Whatever sick demon that had the balls to crawl from the depths of hell and introduce the atrocity of robo-jpop into this world has a reservation for my boot up his ass, Soul internally simmered.

But... He gazed to Maka, still reciting her interpretations in vain just inches from his face, smiling at her blind adoration for something just as geeky as her, Soul continued.

If it makes her act like such a dweeb, I guess it's not all that bad.

"—and that's why there's a sequel song! I have it here somewhere, hold on."

"Okay, I get it Muffin— it's a great love story with a tragic ending and a last minute twist. What else hasn't changed in the basic structure of romance?"

Not taking to his snarky tone, Maka turned around and was about to knock some sense into his dense skull until said dense skull was right in front of her. She stopped as if put on pause by some magic remote control, and couldn't help but notice that Soul wasn't moving away either. That and his eyebrows were the same shade of moonlight as his hair was. Did anyone ever notice that? It was all Maka could think of now.

"I take it I either look hot as hell right now or there's a huge spider on my face," he joked, his warm breath ghosting her cheeks.

Orbs of jade faltering, her eyes lowered abruptly to the iPod in her hands and she pretended they weren't slightly shaking.

"I-It's enormous," she managed to choke out in retribution, "and I hope it's poisonous too."

"Ah, just my luck then."

A month ago his face would've gotten intimate with her hardback Webster's Dictionary if he ever pulled something so...ludicrous. She knew he liked to joke, because they often did during their Pizzeria shifts together. Naturally, they both liked to out-bastard each other as sport; it was fun.

But this wasn't what Maka would term as...fun. For some reason, whenever he would tease her so, her stomach would lodge in her throat and she couldn't stop staring at his tanned Adam's apple, his firm chin, his inky, scarlet gaze.

Soul had to admit too, he didn't know what the shit he was doing. All he knew was that she shut up for ten seconds and managed to look orphan-kitten-in-a-pink-tutu-adorable at the same time, and God help him if he said he didn't like it. Or love it.

Green met red, breath met breath, and Maka's iPod screen was getting a tad foggy from their gradually lessening proximity. Was that hesitance Soul saw reflecting in her eyes, or was it her planning on giving the mother of all upper-cuts when she finally came to? Probably a little bit of both.

Jesus, their sense of humor was fucked up.

The way she paused halfway through a guitar riff was not funny in the least, nor was the way that his thumb met hers as they both pressed down. There their hands lay still and unsure, and if anyone laughed, Soul would've stood up and punched out the smile from their sorry jaw because he seriously could not breathe.

It was just bookworm. Just this sassy little tiny-tits who preferred pigtails and sweater vests over anything Vouge had to say. She liked reading more than breathing, listened to bubblegum crap from Asia and dared to enjoy it, and had a crinkle in her left eye when she laughed and meant it.

Which he managed to bring out. A lot.

And she was glad he did, because she really missed laughing.

Because they were joking, right?

"...I thought you wanted to listen to your sequel thingie."

"You looked tired. Thought that would be enough, since you listened for so long– I mean, yeah."

Right?

"ALLLLRIGHT~!" Liz's voice rang distantly from the kitchen, causing the two to spring back from each other in a mixture of shock and humiliation. "Break Time is officially OVER. Get your asses back to your minimum wage torture or so help me I will set Patti loose on your scent trails!"

~O~

"I still don't quite understand," Maka grit out, hauling the rest of the restaurant's back-up pepperoni supply into the freezer with a final toss. "You guys hang out for basketball rounds, a smoke or two, I get it. But this– it's just being a doormat."

Rubbing his sore knuckles, Soul closed the door to-might as well be freakin' Mount Everest-with relief and made his way to the sink; at some point he wanted to not smell like a well-seasoned slaughterhouse. "'M not a doormat, Maka. Just patient is all. Maybe you could take some notes and learn a thing or three."

"Like what? How to be an enabler?"

"No, it's how to not be a priss with a thorn stuck in her butt."

An indignant scoff sounded between them, and he could hear her stomp off and wipe her hands angrily against her likely ruffled apron, getting ready for register duty. Playfully smiling, Soul prepped for taking his friend's shift (again– it was the third time that week according to Attendance Sheriff Maka Albarn) as the mall's rush hour was peeking in the distance. However he didn't mind and you couldn't blame him. Sure, Star was obnoxious, and loud with a narcissistic attitude to boot, but he was never mean hearted. There in his ego-swelled soul was kindness and a contagious earnestness that couldn't help but be admired; Soul knew Star did a lot of the admiring himself.

Besides, it would've been impossible to keep that monkey in a single place for more than fifteen minutes anyways, even with the promise of a check at the end of each month. Soul thought the workload wasn't too bad either, two jobs not breaking any sweat over his brow. All there was to do was disinfect tables, make smiley faces on pizzas with mushrooms–

"Shit–! Oi Maka, watch where you're freakin' throwing!"

"Sorry Soul, I could've sworn that napkin dispenser was clear across the counter."

-and try to survive the pigtailed nightmare that was his fellow classmate/co-worker. Though, she did make a nice dance partner. If only she could take his hopeless buddy Black*Star in stride as well as she did her waltz.

Never mind her dance moves, he mulled. If her rhythm or anger management was as steady as her aim with aero dynamic household objects, she wouldn't need his lessons in the first place.

Disgruntled, Soul walked away from the dented dispenser and flurry of napkins on the floor (likely leaving her to clean it up, like the purposely oblivious jerk he was), Maka gave a curl of her out-sticking tongue as a sign of victory and patted the old register. As she saw a group of laughing middle schoolers enter the food court, she mentally coaxed just another day, old girl, reassuring the dinosaur calculator. She prayed it wouldn't die on her yet, lest whatever divine being lounging in the stratosphere let Soul laugh 'till his stupid(ly handsome) face turned blue at her with a hundred customers up front and a cash register in flames with its screen blown off as well as the money inside of it.

Those middle schoolers called over another group of preteen friends, and next thing she and Soul knew, a dozen eighth graders wanted two extra-large Hawaiian pizzas and enough root beer to supply their own mini-river. Oh, how they loved being Friday night party suppliers.

She adjusted her frilled apron, which to Maka's ire was horridly stained from pepperoni by-product and grease, and punched in their gargantuan order while exclaiming it right back to Liz and Patti in the back. Let them haul out the army's entire food supply; she'd worked her ass of the whole day as it was. Lifting heavy meats with Soul in a tank top, arms bare, with those tan, chiseled veins showing the right amount of exertion he was asserting was draining. Especially when he would slightly throw it and catch it again as readjustment, and how his finely trained muscles tensed sharply when he caught the falling package in all its girth. It was horribly back-breaking. Really.

Oh, right. Their change.

"Thank you, your order should arrive in thirty minutes or so!"

And with happy smiles and a few exultations of thanks, the group of oversized Nikes and braces left to kill time around the stores while Death Hut prepared their weekend's buffet.

Well, at least she didn't sound as pathetic as she did in her head.

"What kind of pathetic we talkin' about here?"

Maka did an excellent imitation of a suffocating goldfish while Soul Evans managed to perfect the art of appearing from thin air. She couldn't tell if he read her mind or if she was thinking aloud again, but he was so close that he was breathing lightly on the back of her neck, giving her skin-crawling goose bumps that she could easily relate to her jump-scare, so Maka let it go unsaid.

"Christ Soul– I think my heart stopped beating! The hell do you want?"

She lied through her teeth. With her heart actually beating in time with that of a hummingbird on speed, her "ghostly white" face of shock was flushed red.

Soul caught onto her too fast for Maka's comfort, as he smirked and replied, "'M bored. Thought since you used up all the dangerous projectiles around here it'd be safer around you."

He still hadn't stepped back, and they were in the same position as that day before on their break, listening to their music. Damnit, she was supposed to be rock solid, not made of granite and reduced to some immobile statue of nerves!

A few months ago, she would've dislocated his jaw.

A few months ago, he would've backed away ten feet and taken a thorough shower.

A few months ago, she didn't know he would get on his knees and help her wipe the crusty tile floor of this pizza joint, or call Liz at midnight to drive her home to her worrying Papa, bawling at the front door in his outrageous rubber ducky flannels. Soul would have never taken the time to notice how Maka was inspired to try out for volleyball when she saw him beat a slack-jawed Black*Star with a shot clear across the park's basketball court (though she admits it was mostly out of her competitive nature, she did find him a little inspiring). Nor would Maka have guessed that during their ninth grade English class's Secret Santa Party that her favorite knee socks she wore to practice came from Soul himself. It was a safe route back then, cause whodidn't expect socks on Christmas? He dodged the bullet already, but decided to go an extra few miles and purchase long, fashionable ones, hearing volleyball players liked to wear them. She should have known, the black and red stripes should have given his taste away years ago.

But this was now. And now, Soul was resting his chin on her shoulder, slouching even more than he usually did from their height difference, and Maka was rubbing one black and red striped calf against her other matching one in nervous excitement.

Excitement. Can you believe it?

"You have a pizza to make, you know."

"The Thompsons got this, Albarn. We were the sorry asses that hauled dead cow this morning, so take it as a free pass."

"The only slip you'll be getting is a pink one, when Kidd– Manager, finds out we're not-!"

"Over-exerting ourselves," he finished cooly, his head bouncing funnily as his lower jaw didn't move on her shoulder, leaving the rest of his skull to bob up and down in reaction. Maka thought of a muppet Soul, and smiled bemusedly when he continued. "And he'll let us have this one, pigtails! You know why?"

Rolling mossy green eyes, she humored him. "Why, dare I ask?"

A sharp set of teeth greeted her from his smirk, and not but inches away. Soul gently took an arm in each of his (large, in comparison!) hands and shook her once with each enunciated line.

"Because we. Are the best team. This Death Hut has Ever. Seen."

The second eye-roll definitely couldn't mask the lift in Maka's cheeks, because Soul was spouting his stupidly endearing persuasion gigs, and she was buying it.

Again.

"I'll give you this," she offered, spinning around to look at the goofy shark-bear face to face. With a confident poke to his chest, she offered, "I'll get the dough out if you bring out two rolling pins, and we can start twirling some dough for tomorrow's supply."

Because Soul fucking loved that part of the pizza making process the best, and Maka Albarn was painfully aware of it. He also loved button noses and faint freckles on her rosy cheeks, but he decided to keep that in the classified section of his speech records.

Dammit, where were those rolling pins?

~O~

Another week rolled past, with Liz spilling her nail polish in the pizza sauce, Patti using that pizza sauce for unfortunate customers to consume, and their Manager "Kidd" scolding the both of them on how Liz didn't distribute exactly one-eighth of her final coat into the tomato spread and why Patti allowed her to do so while Maka and Soul argued about Asian pop culture and politics somewhere in the background. Hell was centered in the fiery ovens of Shibusen Mall's Death Hut, but the residents didn't seem to mind. After all, there was an end to each day, and a check for every limb lost.

Maka swung her locker shut, readjusting her hoodie before she started her quarter mile trek back home. It was around four o'clock in the evening, if you could call it evening yet, so that meant her bumbling Papa wouldn't be having heart palpitations from worrying about late night drive-by shootings when she arrived home.

She sighed, and gave a bland "see you" to the twins, who got stuck with the late shift that day. Too tired from not doing anything progressive at their job, they dutifully groaned a farewell and continued their game of "who can stare at that lightbulb until they go blind the longest first".

Before she could wonder if she was the only person at their pizzeria who actually worked for pay, Soul appeared, leaning on a food court chair as she opened the "Employee's Only" door, listening on his crappy ear buds to something Maka couldn't make out yet.

"Hey."

"Sup. Ready to roll?"

"As I'll ever be, I guess."

Soul gave a curl of his lip as he slid from his slouch and into a leisurely walk beside her, making their way to the mall's front entrance to walk home for the fifteenth time that month. Maka couldn't give you an explanation of why she kept count, it just became a habit. It was sort of the equivalent of studying an endangered species; she just had to remember. It might not happen again.

The other party, on the other hand, begged to fucking differ. Like hell he would stop escorting her to her house; cool guys were gentlemen, and gentlemen always walked ladies to and from their destinations. It was inscribed on his moral, a code to his soul. Just like walking on the street-facing side of the sidewalk, and not hitting back, even if a girl threatens to lodge an entire encyclopedia set in your skull. Gentlemen were gentle, after all. Especially to girls who deserved it.

"Did you study for–"

"Come on Muffin, please don't start a conversation with a question about studying."

"You didn't even let me finish, though! It's important-!"

"Like I said, not cool at all. Maka, you're going to get a tumor from all the excess information you're storing in your giant-ass head."

"Well yours is going to deflate from malnutrition! Pick up a book and try to absorb something for once!"

"Oi, OI. Watch where you swing that thing— HEY!"

He rubbed his head in a pout, and soured when he saw her return her pocket dictionary (pocket dictionary? Come on, Maka) to her satchel and continue to stroll down Shibusen Mall's enormous parking lot with a spring in her step and a self-satisfied smirk on her face.

Just walking down the main drag of the parking lot, so close their hands were an inch from swinging into each other, the two enjoyed another walk back from work. A sherbet sky dripped its mellow orange onto Maka's hair, making a sort of halo around the light-as-wheat locks, and she chose that moment to look at him in that goofy smile that meant she was somewhat regretting hitting him, though he deserved that one.

Because she was forgiving today.

Soul chose this moment to spontaneously ruffle her pigtails until one came at least halfway undone, and moved to cup one side of her head and gently bring her to bump with his own. Not really processing what he was doing, he let his poorly expressed mix of emotions roll. That action couldn't even begin to show how much he wanted to be around her, to give her reasons to get spitting mad at one minute and reconciled the next, to show her how beautiful her eyes of liquid jade that would harden into granite one moment and melt the next were.

He wished he was eloquent enough to write her a whole novel about how she was perfectly imperfect.

Though Maka stuttered about the sudden burst of affection Soul would not relent, fingers locked onto the nape of her neck. His mind was blank, yet going one hundred miles a minute.

What the hell was he doing?

Why had Maka not pounded his sorry face into the sidewalk yet?

Man, her skin felt soft.

And it wasn't like Maka was doing any better, what with this aggravating man pulling her leg one too many times (often times her allowing it to happen, because she admitted, she was a masochist too) that she couldn't say for sure that this wasn't a joke. Sure, Soul flirted. But it was always play-flirting; it usually ended with a jab to her plainness, her fat ankles, and her boobs that could still fit into her eighth grade bras. Bittersweet play, it was.

Much to her growing anxiousness and heart rate, she didn't feel the bitter yet.

"So," Soul drawled as cooly as his tingling spine would let him, "I've never seen you play."

"Volleyball?"

"No, extreme double-dutch."

Flicking his head but not making any other move, she cleared her throat and answered a shy, "You hate rallies and attending school stuff. Of course you wouldn't have."

"Well, I want to now. When's your newest game scheduled for?"

"The uh, next Thursday of this month."

"Cool." His fingers absently scratched at the nape of her neck, and Maka started to get used to the side of his head leaning against hers as they continued to walk out of the parking lot. Dare she say, she was liking it, a lot. Lord knows how many times she had been guiltily fantasizing about how it would feel.

Stopping as a blue Prius drove across the crosswalk they were paused at, they leaned into each other as the evening milked the lilting gold from the sky. Unanswered questions hung in the air, and the Prius had long since left for the interstate.

"I..."

"Yeah?"

"Practice! I-um. My next practice is tomorrow, after school. So it's sooner."

"Oh." He bit his lip, and swore himself to the grave if this ended anything like a squeaky sixth grader asking her out on their first dance. "I'm off that day too."

Yep, might as well give him a wedgie and steal his Power Ranger's lunch box.

"So, you don't mind?"

"What?" His question hung off, confused from being brought out of his self-loathing.

"Missing out on your day to watch me practice my serves, I mean. You must be pretty bored, huh?"

It ended half-jokingly, but Soul could detect the self-consciousness laced with her words. She was nervous too.

"Maka," he concluded, sliding his hand from her neck to her back, guiding her across the empty street as he spoke, "How come I always have to be bored out of my mind to see you?"

Judging by the flat look she gave him, although the feel of his warm palm on her back was a pleasant sensation, Soul remembered what he said earlier that week.

Groaning internally, he assured, "That's not what I meant, and you know that.Yes you do and don't start up your fifteen minute long speeches with me. Okay, long story short— I wanna see you play. I'm serious! I've always wanted to know if you're as good as Black*Star says you are—"

"Wait a second. Black*Star said what?"

Soul gave a smirk at her calculating look. "He bags a lot on your volleyball, says that he's too good for it and stuff. 'IT HAS TOO MUCH WOMEN IN IT, I MIGHT LOSE MY MASCULINITY IF I TRY TO WHOOP THEIR MORTAL ASSES AND SHOW THEM HOW A REAL MAN PLAYS'. But if I know Star, if he doesn't want to physically show you up, it's more out of humility. Maka, he's afraid to play against you. He thinks you're one of the best players in the school."

A small breeze passed between them, and Maka didn't know how Soul's hand got down to her lower back, slowly pushing her to walk with him to the other side of the crosswalk. She let the cool wind comb through her halfway undone pigtails, and counted the steps she took as she tried to process his words. Surely it wasn't this growing ball of guilt that was weighing down her stomach.

"...Was he honest?"

"And believe it or not, he was sober too." They were only halfway across the street at their distracted pace. Silence ensued, so Soul took it as his cue to continue. "I know Star isn't your jar of honey, 'cause I know he isn't mine, but he has his good points. One is acknowledging a great athlete. And person."

Acknowledging and dirty-talking were two very different terms to Maka, but still she couldn't quite wrap her mind around that babbling idiot having even a sliver of respect for her. Soul could have come up to her in a chicken costume and proceeded to do the Macarena and she would have been less caught off guard than she was now. Was there a tear in the fabric of the universe or were Soul's dexterous pianist hands too warm on her back?

She couldn't believe what she was about to say.

"Well...invite him then if you want. I don't see why he can't come."

Nope. Still wasn't buying it.

"Sure, I'll see if he's free." Finally, they reached the opposite curb, hopping onto the sidewalk and unsure of how to de-tangle from their half-hug. That being if they were sure the chilling air of an oncoming night was worth forsaking their shared body heat (heat from where, neither would specify).

And in the warmth of the sunset, their embrace, and a suffocating embarrassment, Soul got out his cellphone and made a call to a certain blue monkey while Maka walked alongside and tried to convince herself that tomorrow was most certainly not a date.

Now we know where those socks came from! At first I thought Maka bought them from the fiery depths of hell at one of Satan's yard sales, but this makes more sense. PLEASE REMEMBER TO R&R MY HOME SLICES!