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Because Kid doesn't get enough credit. Seriously. I'll save you the rant and just say it: The anime is so WRONG about his strength. BlackStar is the strongest attacker, I get that, but MAKA has the most powerful soul? Maybe for a while, yes, but Kid is the next GRIM REAPER. He doesn't get enough love. D:
So whoop-de-doo with Maka's soul perception, Kid is more awesome than you. :P Then again, I am majorly biased in this, so please no flames. c:
Anyways, enough with the rambling, this is basically an introspective Kid-being-frustrated-with-the-world and spilling-it-to-his-friends kinda chat thing. ;)
Hidden Strengths
Prompt: My crazeh imagination.
Timeline: In between 'Resonance Link - Play the Melody of the Souls?' or whatever it's called and the defeat of the Kishin. i.e., there is still that tacky cloud of red all over the world. c:
Characters: Death the Kid, Maka Albarn, BlackStar, Liz and Patty Thompson, Soul Eater Evans, Tsubaki Nakatsukasa, and probably some others I'm too lazy to mention.
"I think you should hit me. I hit you earlier. This'll be payback."
"I'm not gonna hold back."
"Good. It wouldn't mean anything if you did."
-Maka Albarn and BlackStar-
Kid sighed and cracked open one eye as he watched Maka and BlackStar argue about the latest petty thing. BlackStar's just frustrated and pent up because that Kishin egg got away from him, and Maka got a B- on a test because she was too worried about almost everything. One plus the other equals fighting and no resonance. He felt like adding 'These humans never cease to amaze me,' onto his train of thought, but decided that was cruel and tried to forget it.
"You're such an idiot! I thought we'd worked this out, but you just HAD to ruin it again!" Maka was shouting.
"I'm not the one who ruined it! You're our team leader, shouldn't you be 'accepting' and all that crap?!"
"Kind of hard to be accepting when your team mate is being a stuck-up little jerk!"
"Kind of hard to be a good team mate when your team leader is a moron!"
"Shut the hell up! You're just annoyed because you lost to that Kishin on your last mission!"
"I did NOT lose! He was too fast and ran away like a coward!"
"You lost, face it!"
"I did NOT!"
"Yes you did!"
"No!"
"Yes!"
"No!"
"Yes!"
Kid couldn't take it any longer. "Shut UP!" the reaper snapped, effectively silencing them. "For the love of Death, you sound like two squabbling toddlers. Start acting your age." Both of them were shocked. Kid NEVER reacted or shouted. He was always the calm, stoic one.
"This isn't your business, Kid," BlackStar retorted, but he sounded unsure of himself. All four weapons watched quietly.
The reaper stepped forward threateningly. "Isn't it?"
Maka raised her hands defensively. "We can work it out. Just-"
"No you can't." Kid rolled his eyes. "Both of you are overreacting to petty things. Why can't you see what is IMPORTANT? Look up. The sky is red. Three guesses as to why."
Neither deemed that with an answer, but BlackStar started to mutter; "She insul-"
"Of course she insulted you!" he snapped. "And you insulted her. Gods, you're not four years old."
For a minute, all three meisters were silent, then BlackStar was stupid enough to mumble "Like you would know, dissolving into a temper tantrum every time you see something asymmetrical."
Kid rounded on him, eyes blazing. "That. Is. It," he hissed. "I'm not taking this crap any longer. From you either." He glared at Maka. "Symmetry is balance, is Order, and it is my job- my EXISTENCE- to protect Order. Listen to the pair of you, fighting like squirrels over a nut. Think about your words. Here one moment, gone in a millisecond. A blink of an eye. And you know what? Your lifetimes, compared to mine, will end up being about equal to a blink. Your responsibilities are fleeting and irrelevant. As soon as chichiue is no longer Lord Death, I will be responsible for the entire world. You can bet I won't squander my time on foolish arguments and small spats."
Jaws hung.
"You really think we're that disposable?" Maka replied, shaken.
Kid froze and his golden eyes twisted with some unreadable emotion. "Of course not. I'm trying to get you to see how childish and annoying your fighting is. I thought you resolved it, the day we first suceeded in linking souls, but it would appear I stand corrected." Taking a deep breath, he turned on his heel and announced, "I need some air. Excuse me for a moment." Then he walked with his hands in his pockets out of the clearing, leaving his dumbstruck team behind.
"Dumbass!" BlackStar yelled at his retreating back. Maka didn't reply, but glared at the reaper and the assassin both.
"What the hell was that?" was all Soul could manage.
Liz and Patty shrugged, completely nonplussed. "Maybe he's in one of his moods," Liz murmured.
"He has moods?" Soul inquired dryly.
"Yep," Patty giggled. "It's not always symmetry. Sometimes it's just all the, stress, and stuff..." She pursed her lips in a decisively un-Patty-like show of solemnity. "He gets really withdrawn and just snaps at either of us when we try to talk to him."
"Whatever for?" Tsubaki asked softly.
Liz hesitated. "Stress, like Patty said. Usually 'cause... well, he's the next Grim Reaper, and with his father stuck here, all of that responsibility falls on his shoulders when at his age he should rightfully be able to ignore it. Besides, you know what a Reaper's task really is, besides the whole school thing. That's just the current Lord Death."
Maka's glare softened, but only a little bit. "Still. He made it sound like we were worthless."
"He doesn't think that," Liz tried to soothe her, but the scythe meister was unconvinced.
"Hmph. Whatever his mood, he didn't have to snap at us like that."
Soul mumbled something like "You weren't solving it yourselves..." and promptly earned a book slammed into his skull. BlackStar started to argue and earned the same treatment. Tsubaki started to gently remind her drooling meister, half-conscious as he was, about how they needed to work together on this. Maka reprimanded her weapon angrily while he rolled on the ground in pain and whimpered in agreement. Liz and Patty had withdrawn to talk between themselves, growing distant, like how they had been on the streets before Kid had met them.
And behind all of their backs, twenty yards afield across the clearing, Kid sat with his back against a tree, staring off into space - aka a spot in the sky just above Tsubaki's head. He remained unnoticed for a good twenty minutes, in which Maka and BlackStar had dissolved into another argument, Tsubaki trying to calm them down, Soul watching with narrowed eyes, and Liz and Patty still withdrawn.
After a particularly heated comment courtesy of BlackStar, thrown at Maka and by proxy Kid, about how 'you always take Kid's side anyways! The two of you are goody two-shoes, sucking up to the teachers! How am I supposed to be on a team with you idiots anyway?!' Kid found it a good idea to comment quietly, "Are you quite done arguing?"
The team spun around in surprise to see the young reaper sitting with his back against a tree facing them, knees drawn up to his chest and half his body and face shrouded in shadow while the other half was aglow with the pale evening light. It made him look downright unearthly.
"How long have you been there?" BlackStar accused.
"Long enough," Kid answered with a sigh, standing up. "It's evening. Liz, Patty, we didn't get any work done. We'll be staying home tomorrow. Let's go."
Both sisters, who were loyal to their meister far more than the team at this point (they had been extremely disapproving of the row between the other two meisters, and were sticking with Kid), shot narrowed looks at the rest of the team and flashed into their partner's hands as guns. He had summoned Beelzebub, and with the quiet roar of the engines, took off into the darkening sky.
BlackStar flipped him off as he soared away, and earned two shots placed symmetrically millimeters away from his toes in return.
The next month showed little progress being made - the team, once one of the elite and well-favored resonance teams, had been declared unofficially disbanded for the time being. Kid, Liz, and Patty were still taking missions, but had not set foot in the DWMA other than to report to the Death Room since that night almost four weeks ago. BlackStar had gotten a lot more quiet and rude, Tsubaki sad and withdrawn, while Maka had been taking out her abrasive temper on her partner and Blair. Soul had taken to hanging out with BlackStar more and more, to escape his meister's overlording. Blair spent most of her time in Chupa Cabra's.
One day, the tension came to a broil, because of a ill-timed comment in the cafeteria...
34 Days Since 'That Day'...
BlackStar sat down at his table in the cafeteria with a grunt, attacking his monstrous plate of food with half-hearted enthusiasm. Tsubaki ate quickly and quietly next to him, shooting those tiny glances that annoyed him so much every so often. The 'oh-no-he's-eating-like-that-again' looks coupled with 'I-think-he's-depressed' with a healthy dash of 'what-do-I-do?!'.
"We're coming in on Saturday and that's final!"
Slam.
The assassin didn't even have to look up to know that both noises had emmitted from the very annoying and pissed-off monster known as Maka as she seated herself at the end of the table that the blue-haired meister was sitting at. Soul sat down across from his meister and groaned, "Not cool. Extra lessons again?"
BlackStar had to surpress a snort. Unfortunately, a certain scythe meister had ears like a bat and whipped her head around to face him, pigtails flying comically. "What was that?!" she hissed.
"Oh, come on now," Tsubaki tried to soothe as her meister pointedly ignored the ashen-blonde meister. "Let's not start this again."
"She started it," BlackStar pointed out childishly.
Maka slammed her hand down and stood up, making only a few other students jump around in surprise (they were used to it). "Say that again, you little bastard."
"Dirty words from the teacher's pet," he mocked instead. "What a shocker."
"Why you-"
She was held back by Soul, as he tried to push her away from the annoyance and to a different table. Tsubaki put a warning hand on her meister's shoulder; not that it had any effect. People were starting to clear the cafeteria in preparation for another brawl when a disturbance rippled through them. It only caught the attention of the two seething meisters and their weapons when a smooth, familiar voice cut through the air.
"At it again, I see."
Both BlackStar's and Maka's heads snapped round, and they snarled in almost perfect unison, "Kid."
The young shinigami returned their glares with his normal, half-lidded bored look. Today, however, there was an icy glint of something otherwordly and deadly flickering in his golden eyes. "Nice to see you too."
"I'm afraid I can't return that sentiment," Maka muttered resentfully. "Where've you been?"
"Important business of my father's," he responded easily.
"None of your business," Liz added sharply, a slight drawl slurring her words. She and Patty had returned almost entirely to giving off the same street-thug vibe as they had before becoming Kid's partners. The younger had a slightly deranged, unhinged look in her blue eyes that spoke of something more dangerous than her usual insanity in her baby-blue eyes.
This caught Maka off guard a little, and her eyes widened the slightest bit. "You look like you've been doing the devil's work."
"We have," Kid responded completely seriously, and his eyes narrowed. For a split second all those looking on could have sworn that his face was briefly submerged in shadow, skulls dancing around him and an aura of death pulsing through the room. Then it was gone, and the only ones unaffected were Kid and the sisters.
"Like it?" Patty giggled manically, fiddling with a small object - a pocket knife?! - in one hand. "Kiddo's been working on it. Works when we hafta scare some crappy monsters off, y'know?"
"Language," Kid reminded her absentmindedly. "We came because chichiue has a mission for the four of you. We're supposed to escort you to the Death Room."
"You think we can't find our way there?" BlackStar sneered.
Kid's aura darkened again. "No, we're just making sure you get there."
All four stood and filed around the table to stand in front of Kid and the Thompsons. With a jerk of his head, the reaper led them out, and the two sisters flanked them. The other students, who had been watching like rabbits frozen in the glare of a headlight, went back to eating.
Only fifty paces down the hallway, in a rather secluded corridor with no classrooms, BlackStar tugged on Tsubaki's hand sharply. Reluctantly, she transformed into ninja sword mode and her meister held her to the back of Kid's neck. In an instant, their little train stopped dead and with a small click the blue-haired boy felt the cold steel of Liz in her gun form, resting against the back of his neck. It was Maka and Soul's turn to look like rabbits in the headlights.
"Yes?" Kid asked calmly. Patty chuckled creepily and pressed the barrel of her sister's gun form a little deeper into the assassin's neck.
"So much as twitch that hand, mister, an' I'll blow yer frickin head off."
The spiky-haired boy remained unmoving. "I wanna know what's going on. You disappear off the face of the earth for a month, then come back and order us around like we're your slaves and your weapons are your bodyguard thugs."
Patty cocked the gun with a click and a tiny snarl. Kid held up his hand placatingly, and she froze, but didn't move her sister.
"Yes, I suppose you should have an answer," the reaper mused. "However, I am not obligated to give you one, nor shall I until you reach the Death Room. Preferably alive. Well, my orders were to bring you there, not necessarily in one piece..."
"You think you can take me, you bastard?" BlackStar challenged heatedly. "I'll surpass you easily!"
Before any of them could so much as blink, Kid had whipped away from Tsubaki's blade, flipped into the air, and smashed BlackStar into the ground with his heel, leaving a small crater and a cloud of dust. Patty started to glow and prepare to toss her sister forward, but Kid waved her off.
BlackStar sprang to his feet and prepared to tackle the reaper, but Tsubaki transformed back, and, in a decidedly un-Tsubaki-like way, slapped him. All of them froze.
"That's enough!" the normally gentle weapon shouted. Her meister gaped at her. "I've had enough of your fighting. You guys are a TEAM, and you have to work together." She glared at Maka and Soul. "I told you two the same thing when we fought the werewolf in London. Kid, this goes for you too." She whirled on the reaper, who blinked, still surprised. "You were right in what you said a month ago while we were practicing, but you've been drawn into this petty fight too. Don't deny it." Then she crossed her arms and glared at them all sternly. "Now. Make up."
The three meisters, plus Soul, gazed in total bewilderment at her for a moment, then turned to each other. Liz and Patty blinked, losing a little of their street thug vibe, then crossed their arms and joined Tsubaki. Kid rolled his eyes at them helplessly.
"Yeah, do it or I'll blow yer faces off!" Patty cackled, regaining some of her old cheer.
Soul and BlackStar gulped and faced off with the other two. Maka was still wearing her stubborn look, but more hesitant, and Kid looked unsure.
"Do it," Liz advised dryly, face flashing on the barrel of her gun form.
Kid stretched out a hand to Maka, schooling his face into a perfectly stoic expression. She paused and looked it over for a minute, shooting glances between Tsubaki, Soul, BlackStar, Patty, then back to Kid. Then she shook hands slowly.
"BlackStar," Tsubaki warned. Her partner winced and gingerly shook hands with Maka, letting go quickly, then glared Kid down and flicked his gaze upwards meaningfully at the huge red bruise on the crown of his head, courtesy of the reaper's kick.
"Do I have to?" he complained childishly. Tsubaki's glare intensified. Gulping, the sheepish blue-haired assassin barely touched his hand to Kid's, jerked it, then let go.
Sighing, his weapon conceded, "I suppose that will have to do."
They all shuffled in a small blob down the hallway to the Death Room, maintaining a stony silence. That is, until Kid commented sourly about the placement of his kick, and both Patty and Maka couldn't supress their giggles any longer. BlackStar joined in after a moment, Liz smirked happily, Soul grinned, and Tsubaki chuckled softly.
Kid was walking only a few paces behind the rest, and as they dissolved into their normal chatter once more, he reflected on the impressive short term memory of humans, and how quickly they forgot a grudge.
But, he decided with a small half-smile and joined in the conversation, it was one of their best qualities. Not the short term memory, that is. Their ability to laugh even in a hard time such as this.
I suppose it's a good thing to remember for the next few centuries. They're good friends to have.
After all, even humans have hidden strengths.
Ack, I turned it into a team fic, didn't I? Oh well. ^^ Hope you enjoyed my corny ending.
Kat