I would like to thank That anime-cartoon fangirl for helping me write this chapter and the chapter after it. I would also like to thank WolfAnne. There won't be any fight scenes in the next chapter but not many people read Soul Eater for the fighting. Please read and review please.

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Have you ever watched into the woods and thought the trees were alive? Even thought that they were witches reincarnated to grab people's hands. It was a scary forest. The ground was dark and wet. People would tell you to stay away from it, but it's where Melinda and her husband Dave live.

Ian never knew his sister was a Meister until she ended that wolf eared human's life. She didn't tell him how she was a Meister. And here Ian thought she was in some kind of trouble with the werewolves and undead, but she looked like she was in safe hands.

" Thanks for saving us back there, Melinda," Ian said. " And I should thank the lord that you made it there in time."

" Ian, this girl is your weapon, isn't she?" Melinda asked.

" She is."

" Why didn't she transform into a weapon?"

"She... somehow she doesn't like me."

"How so?"

"I don't know."

" A girl doesn't hate a boy for no reason. You did something that made her hate you."

" I didn't do anything. I just walked into Lord Death's Office, said hi to her and she has been hating me and pushing me and challenging me every since."

"Maybe she secretly likes you... in some point."

"For me, that is somehow impossible."

"Nothing is impossible and she is a girl."

Ian didn't understand girls. He was thinking maybe his sister was wrong. Ali was never nice to him, except that one time he asked her to hold his hand on the way home and she agreed. That was one of the happiest moments Ian had in Death City.

Ian saw it; his home. His small cabin looking home where he and his sister lived before she got married and had a child, and still lives in it. There was no place like home.

Ian could only watch as the setting of his beloved house fully came into view. It truly was his home, and the one place that he could call relief. He restrained himself from racing forward into the house, taking a deep breath of the nostalgia and the wood that was the comfort of his childhood. Despite what just happened, he was happy.

Yet, he forced his legs to walk towards the house, Melinda opening the door and letting him in as he carried his weapon inside. The house still had the same mucky smell to it that was both warmth and comfort. He set his weapon down on the couch, and stared down at her.

He had been assigned to her not too long ago, and it was painstakingly obvious her dislike of him. Her brunette hair fell in wavers over her shoulders, and despite the fact that she had been knocked unconscious, she looked dainty and innocent in her sleep. He knew that it was a cover up, for her sharp tongue and cunning remarks were shown often in the icy words that she spoke. She wasn't afraid of a fight and made sure her viewpoint of Ian was well known to all around.

Ian wasn't quite sure what it was about himself that she hated, but he knew that if he didn't try to get on her good side, the fights that they got into in order to obtain souls would become harder should they not resonate and combine the power of their souls.

"Ian," a hushed voice had called, and her turned from his weapon to find Melinda standing behind the older couch in the living room. She smiled at him, and handed a cup of tea to him very gently. He took it from her, nodding in gratitude, and then sat cross-legged on the floor in front of his weapon, taking a single sip of the tea and then letting the warmth seep through the porcelain into his cold fingers. He would wait for his weapon to awaken.

" Tell me about your adventures in Death City," Melinda said. " I remember it being the greatest school experience of my life."

Ian's fingers twitched. He didn't know where to start. He wasn't exactly given fair treatment like the rest of the people born in Death City. He studied and found friends but most of them were a little weird. Death the Kidd he didn't know if he was trying to be nice to him or flirting with him.

"Well, you know how Death City is. Despite our job being to protect it, people are still trying to cause trouble. We work hard, diligently, to assure that the streets are safe. It wasn't exactly easy after my last partner had died, but its getting better. Hopefully Ali will learn to like me." Ian trailed off, and Melinda glanced at him quickly.

"Did you just say that your last partner died?" she repeated the words as though they were impossible to believe. Ian nodded gravely.

"My last partner was amazing," he breathed these words, remembering back to the weapon that he'd had before. A simple katana, but far from a simple girl. She had a mysteriously nice personality, sarcastic, witty. She could spin jokes off the tip of her tongue and make anyone feel anything she pleased for her words could work magic. She was kinder than most, showing clemency as Tsubaki did, and resolving conflicts rather than starting them. "She was bright spirited, optimistic, had a heart of gold, and never missed a beat for a good joke. She was the light of the school, of they city. Not a person didn't know her, she could befriend whoever she wanted, and this put us on different spectrums. I'm not well known over there, rather just known as her partner. She-.. she took the blow from a kishin for me, and managed to kill it before bleeding out on her own." The pair sat in silence, and Melinda swallowed, unsure of how to react to what she had just heard. There was movement on the couch, and Ali sat up, turning and staring at Ian. Neither of them averted their gaze, and moments passed before she spoke.

"What were her last words to you?" she asked, and Ian blinked, the question not quite registering for a few seconds.

"She told me to protect Death City, and everyone in it. She told me to make a living for myself, and to accomplish something. She told me to make others smile, and to keep smiling that's what she would want.." Ian faltered, and Ali stared at him, and then turned around stretching. Melinda stood, ready to go back to the kitchen when Ali spoke.

"Well, you've done a really crappy job of that, haven't you?" she asked, and Ian immediately felt lower than a worm's belly. He knew that Ali hated him, but this was most definitely pushing him.

"Ali, that's not-." Ian began but she cut him off, turning to him.

"Listen here, hotshot," she snapped, her eyes narrowed. "That girl gave you her dying wish, her request. Don't treat it like she just said it to hear her own voice one last time. Treat it as an order, something that has to be done. Don't live your life wallowing in the pity that you've set yourself into. You'll never be a good meister if you keep holding yourself back out of fear."

Ian inhaled sharply.

" Ian, I have a confession to make." Melinda got off her chair and looked at Ian in the eyes. " When I sent that letter I really didn't need your help. I mean me and Dave have fought so many creatures before. We once fought three kishin. This threat is nothing to us. We sent that letter because we wanted to train you."

" You mean their is no one to fight?" asked Ali growling her teeth.

" There is. But we found a way to keep our house hidden for seven days and six hours. I turned it on since we got back so we lost five minutes."

"What a shame, looks like I won't have much to do today then." Ali said, standing and stretching her arms above her head. Ian was not about to remind her that she had just woken up from injuries, but she seemed confident; different almost.

"We should start immediately." Melinda said, and the pair nodded. "However, you two have to work together. Your souls must resonate."

"Of course, so long as this moron over here promises to me personally that he'll keep his old weapon's dying words a vow." Ali said without missing a beat, and Ian turned to look at her. Her facial expression remained stoic, showing that she wasn't joking. He wasn't sure what exactly made her so persistent on keeping his old weapon's promise, but at the moment he needed her to work with him.

"Okay." Ian said, and Ali stuck out her pinky.

"Pinky promise?"

"Are you serious?" Ian was dumbfounded at how impishly childish this seemed.

"Of course!" Ali linked their pinkies, and then yanked him forward until their faces were but inches apart, and she grinned. "This means that if you break this promise, I'll break your pinky finger." She let go of him, taking a couple steps back and transforming into a pair of twin katanas. "Let's go, hotshot."

Ian hesitated to pick her up. The last time he had tried, she had electrocuted him with her soul wavelength, and when they first became partners, he couldn't even lift her up, despite the fact that he soul was in two pieces for each weapon. He placed his hands on the hilts, and lifted them into the air as though they weighed nothing.

"There, that wasn't so hard, was it?" Ali said in an annoyed tone from the weapon, and Ian remained confused as he followed Melinda to another room they had set up. All this time he had been able to wield Ali as a weapon, she just hadn't let him. Or had something changed in her heart just now? "Just so you can probably stop wondering about it, you could have used me as a weapon the entire time. I just refused to allow you because, personally, I thought you were a bit dense." Ali admitted, and Ian could only stiffen as she laughed at his reaction. Why had she tried so hard to fend him off only to open up to him now?

"We're here." Melinda said in a small voice, and opened the door.

"You see, I happen to be a master pianist." Melinda explained at their bewilderment. "I also happened to be good with long set contraptions. I simply play, and the enemies will rise up around you. Its your job to hack down as many as you can in the quickest amount of time."

"What, that's its?" Ali asked, her face appearing on the sword in a rather annoyed mood. "No training, no form technique? You're going to send us in with absolutely nothing?"

"Sometimes learning on the fly is exactly what you need to do in order to learn properly." Melinda explained, sitting herself down on the seat of the piano and stretching her arms out. She rolled her shoulders to loosen them, and let her hands fall into place directly over the keys, ready to play them. It was as if an angel herself had begun playing, and Ian was mesmerized by the fluency her hands contained whilst flying over the white and black keys.

So mesmerized that he almost missed the dummy target flying straight for him.

He brought the sword up, cutting the dummy into two pieces and letting them fly off to either side. Another dummy launched into the air, this time attached to a pole, and Ian decapitated it in seconds. They came up and appeared at a rather slow pace, and Ian caught on quickly to the pattern of not only the tune but of the contraption around him.

If possible, Melinda started playing even faster, her hands reduced to almost nothing but a blur as she slid over the piano, her fingers moving fast and the song speeding up. Ian had to dodge, slice, block, roll, and attack at a much faster pace, and he could feel sweat beginning to pool on the back of his next and lower abdomen. He hit dummy after dummy, slicing them in two only to find that several more took the first one's place.

Melinda's hands became nothing but a peachy blur as she played as fast as she could, the dummies launching into the air at Ian from all sides and the piano song no longer sounding like a song; it was closer to someone jumping on the keys. Ian could only fight, and he twisted and turned, ducked, slashed, and hacked his way through the onslaught of inanimate humanoid creatures as they appeared at such a fast rate. When it seemed as though the last of them had been flung, he slumped to his knees, hand still on the hilt as he used it for balance, digging the tip of the swords into the dirt.

A snap from behind made him flinch, and before he could move to block the dummy flying at him, the swords were gone from his hands. Ali stood behind him, one sword in her hands as the dummy fell to the ground, several different grasses and greens pooling from its insides.

"Lesson number one." Melinda spoke as Ian and Ali stared one another down. "Always trust your partner in the face of danger." With that, she stood from the piano, rubbing her palms as if to remove the buzzing effects of pinched nerves. She walked indoors, leaving Ian and Ali to merely look at one another.

"Looks like I just did what your last weapon partner did," she mumbled, and glared at Ian. "You're getting a second chance with this I guess. Do me a favor and don't screw this one up." She stormed inside, leaving Ian to sit on his knees, listening to the sounds of the forest and feel the cool of the evening as it swept in; he pondered what just happened.

' If this is a second chance, why do I feel like I'm just going to mess it up like the first time?'