"It looks kind of cloudy for a picnic now that I think about it…" Maka said sadly as the group walk to the second campus. She and Tsubaki had been working almost all morning on making lunch for everyone to celebrate Crona coming back.
"That's okay! Rain is fun!" Akira said cheerfully, "It makes the plants happy!"
"I hate rain," Liz grumbles, "It's gross and makes my makeup run."
"It wouldn't if you used a sealer after your done putting it on."
"You don't set and seal your makeup?" Tsubaki asks, surprised.
"Yeah, it makes it practically indestructible," Maka adds.
"What? Why did none of you tell me this earlier." Liz looked at her two friends in surprise.
"It's not like you guys talk about makeup that much." Soul grumbles.
"How does Maka know then? You only wear makeup to dances!"
"Tsubaki helped me pick out the right tones for my skin when we went to the mall."
"Hey, why don't we settle down here?" Tsubaki suggests, gesturing to a clearing smaller than the one they had been in for class a few days ago.
Maka spreads out the large blanket and puts the cooler down. Crona sits, grateful that all of their friends wanted them back without any fuss. Akira and Patty wander away in different directions as soon as Liz turns her back. Blackstar challenges Soul to see how high they can each get on the tallest tree on the edge of the clearing.
"Don't go too high or you'll break the branches!" Tsubaki yells.
"I guess it's more of a contest of who weighs less, then," Maka jokes, uncovering the fruit salad.
"Where'd Akira and Patty go?" Liz asks, looking around in a panic.
"Did they wander off?" Tsubaki asked.
"Ugh, probably. Akira's nursemaid payed us a visit this morning and told Patti and I to make sure this doesn't happen."
"Really? Why?"
"Well, Okay, so, You know how Kid had OCD because of his father's madness being of Order?"
"Yeah" Maka and Tsubaki say.
"Well, when they were whole as Elder they still had OCD, but Mavis remembers Death telling his wife that it had gotten pretty severe after he split."
"What's that have to do with Akira though? I tough he said he was a different person from Kid." Maka said, taking a bite of a strawberry
"Wait, who was Elder?" Crona asks.
"Oh, Elder was who Kid and Akira were before their soul parts split."
"Huh."
"Akira and Kid are different people," Liz starts again, "But Mavis said that Elder's other disorder may end up being sever now that they're just Akira the way Elder's OCD got sever when they were just kid."
"What other disorder?"
"It was like… dissociation? No, depersonalization. She said it's from his mom's madness being Eternity, and getting detached from time due to existing for so long or something. Makes sense, Patti and I kept finding him spacing out weirdly, so at least we know what it is now. I don't know what to do though. We got a hang of helping with his OCD but this is going to be completely different. Mavis said that it's not as obvious as OCD is too, so we're going to have to watch his wavelength."
"I'm sure you and Patti will do fine." Crona says, "You're good partners."
Liz smiles.
Soon Patti is back and telling everyone about this really pretty butterfly she followed and Tsubaki calls the boys out of the tree for sandwiches and potato follows Akira's wavelength to find them bent over picking at rocks on the ground.
"What are you doing?" Liz asks.
"Look at how soft these are!" he says instead of answering her question, dumping five round smooth stones into the hands.
"Most people wouldn't call rocks soft but they are smooth. Anyway, we're eating, don't wander off."
"Okay."
Soon everyone is sitting and eating happily, until Maka notices a worried expression on Crona's face as Ragnarock whispers something to them.
"You okay?" she asks her friend.
"Y-yeah," they stutter, "It just feels like there's a weird wavelength somewhere, I was ignoring it earlier. It keeps flickering in and out…"
"Huh," Maka muttered, turning on her soul perception. "I don't feel anything." she says after a few moments. "Tell me when you feel it again and I'll see if I can catch it too, okay?"
"Okay."
Soon all thoughts of the strange wavelength are lost in lunch conversation and card games as the kids celebrate the return of their friend.
The peace only lasts an hour.
The attack starts when Crona grabs Maka's arm in fear, the wavelength they had been feeling fully there and multiple. When Maka starts soul Perception she gasps.
"BlackStar, Akira, Soul Perception. Something's wrong."
"The hell is that?" BlackStar asks, "where is it even-?"
"I don't know, Soul?"
Soul transforms, and the three girls follow suit.
"You mean you can't feel where it's coming from?" Ragnarok asks from his sword form, "some Meister you are."
"Ragnarok stop," Crona mutters, "you know I sense things differently."
"This is one hell of a fucking difference meister."
Crona sighs, and rebalances their stance, eyes shifting nervously around the trees where they can feel the souls coming from.
"Yo Akira, you know what this is?" Soul asks.
"The only example I have isn't close enough to be right, I'm as lost as you guys are." He grumbles, and his weapons are surprised at the extent of his sudden change of mood.
Then, all at once the fight begins. Souls that look like distorted Kishin Eggs materialize fully into people and attack. They all wear black outfits with short capes and wide hoods, faces covered with dull black porcelain masks that have only noses and cut out eyes for features.
Some have knives, polearms, crossbows, artillery. It's hard to tell how many there are with the commotion of the fighting. Akira and the Thompsons take out the ranged fighters hiding in the trees while Maka fights two or three into a line so Crona can use Screech Alpha on more than one enemy. BlackStar has Tsubaki in chain scythe mode and barrels through a couple before getting nicked in the shoulder by someone's blade.
But then they aren't the only ones fighting, and two people, a boy in a dark blue T-shirt with a shotgun and a girl in white with an inky black rapier are fighting beside them. Akira stutters to a halt in shock and nearly ends up with a cleaver to the neck.
"Liz, Patti, if you two wield each other I can wield my sister and we'll have an extra person in our ranks." they yell over the fighting, making eye contact with Rowan as she stabs a non-human figure through the chest.
"Okiedokie!" Patti says with a seriousness that only she can apply to that word as she turns into her human form and catches her sister, shooting a couple of masks point blank a second later. Akira catches two daggers, one white gold, and the other obsidian, and quickly turns to dodge the spear aimed at his back, slicing the shaft upwards so that it breaks before it can reach BlackStar.
"Second Formation!"
The two daggers quickly merge together and elongate into a double sided six foot spear, one blade white, the other black. The acting-meister soon thrusts the white end into the ground and propels himself up and over a lunging mask, bringing a blade-turned foot down to slice through the adversaries neck.
"Where the fuck are these things coming from?!" Ragnarok yells as Crona parries a pole ax away from Maka's blind spot. The clearing is already littered with odd looking souls, but more keep coming.
"Language Ragnarok." Says Crona quietly, slicing through the figure trying to attack his friend.
"You good there Akira?" Zadkiel yells over the gunfire of his partner, a worried glance at the frenzied wavelength the siblings are giving off.
"We're fine!" They yell in unison.
BlackStar gets an arrow through his arm, and Tsubaki screams for him to stop when he tells her to go into fey blade mode and switches both sides of her chain scythe to the hand attached to the uninjured arm.
"Come on Tsubaki I can use that form with one hand!"
She changes form quickly so that he can block a cutlass from cutting into his leg.
Another yell is heard moments later from Liz and Patti, the younger sister clutching her left above the hip, the pink fabric of her shirt showing a growing red stain as she blasts the hell out of the individual who cut her.
Soon after the two sustained injuries a surprisingly powerful wavelength of rage is felt by everyone in the clearing, wafting off of Akira and his sister. Maka, concerned for her friend, zeros in on his soul and, after some focus finds that two wavelengths are trying to fight each other for control of what's going on.
It looks painful, but she can't tell if the blazing anger is from that or him seeing his friends get hurt, or both. Soon she feels a new power, and looks up to see a Lord Death holding an unfamiliar scythe. It's all black like her father, save for an opalescent tooth like design on the blade. The blade positioning reminds her of a halberd in the way that there's the main, large blade, and then a smaller one on the other side, but the blade on the other side seems to almost be like a flattened hook. As soon as Lord Death and the mysterious weapon show up, the masked adversaries seem to be swallowed by their shadows, along with all of the defeated souls floating in the clearing.