Resonate: First meeting with Crona
They had already completed their mission.
The assignment Lord Death had given to them was neither too simple nor too challenging. The Reaper seemed to have a gift for pairing the right Tech and weapon with the correct job for their skill set.
They were just about to pack up and head back to the hotel (they had a flight to catch the next afternoon) when Maka mentioned the weird goings-on happening just a half mile away. In the vicinity of a rather stunning old church that Soul had been eyeing earlier.
It was obvious that they would be checking out whatever was happening, or not happening, inside said church. Still, Soul felt compelled to mention his dissenting opinion.
Maka, in turn, felt absolutely drawn to the church… and thus, dragged her reluctant weapon to the building anyway.
It was Maka who first understood the completely unholy hell they had walked into. With the doors that only open one way and the gut feeling that this… mister… was stronger than them both. She could sense the weapon on him somewhere, winding around the boy's soul wavelength like ivy.
The scraps of resonance between herself and Soul whispered her fear into his being.
The impossibly thin boy summoned his weapon, a black bladed sword.
They worked in harmony after that second, each reaching out their resonance links and focusing on the task at hand as if they were born to do nothing else.
A few seconds into the fight (after the sword mister's blade screamed loud enough to shake Maka's very bones) Soul felt something strange in his mister. Fear. The scythe mister had never vividly expressed fear, she thought it irrational and useless… and he normally agreed with her.
However, he found her fear to be rooted in very reasonable, rational concerns.
Like the fact that they couldn't leave this church, because, as the sword mister so elegantly stated… the doors only opened one way. They only opened, unforgiving, inward.
Or how completely outmatched they were by the aforementioned sword mister… because landing a blow to the misters skin did nothing, and blocking the sword was damn near killing Soul.
The scythe did not find fault in his mister's fears. Even without the same detailed analysis Maka had given the situation Soul was acutely aware that without an act of god they would die here.
In retrospect, they were spared by an act of god. (The Death Weapon Mister Academy's two finest students did demolish the church's heavy wooden doors and wound the sword mister… not a moment too soon.)
But Maka did not really notice. She could never dwell on that particular set of events, because what occupied all of the scythe mister's focus was the state of her partner and the actions that led him to that state.
She is amazed and guilt ridden at the very idea of him in human form blocking a blow from a weapon. It has been twelve hours and already the bleeding has stopped and his skin has been sewn closed. (The scar on his body is screaming of her failure and his dedication)
What she does not understand (she replays their near slaughter over and over in her memory) is how she didn't know what he was going to do. One moment they were resonating, filling each other up with anger and fear… the next moment she felt nothing from him.
There was no sense of disconnect as there normally was upon ending a resonance link. Soul had managed to cut off their connection without warning and without hurting her. (The establishment and disconnection of a resonance link was a mutual process. To make it a one-sided action was to run a high risk of damaging the link between mister and weapon.)
She stood, too anxious and hyper-tense to sit. Maka refused to leave Soul's bedside, an understandable course of action. One that earned her a wide berth with anyone who wished to set foot in the weapon's hospital room.
She radiated restrained anger and something akin to fear.
Just underneath that emotion were more subtle feelings. Joy that her partner would pull through this assignment. Doubt in her skills as a mister, due mainly to crossing paths with someone who had bested her so soundly and looked not a day older than herself. (She was so used to being the best. Second rate in anything, especially this sort of thing, was little more than absolute failure.)
The last emotion was buried so deep in herself that she knew she would never give it voice. Yet it seeped into all of her other emotions in some form or another.
She was not worth saving. Not after failing him.
Maka sighed and ran a hand through her hair. The hospital smelled like bleach, copper and the tang of lemons. The monitor hooked to Soul's body beeped out a consistent heart rate. The tile and the shine of the glass pane in the window caught her reflection and threw it back at her.
…
She would eventually get used to seeing his scar, though she would never forget its existence. Not even when he hid it under sweaters and tuxedo jackets or light cotton t-shirts.
…
"I can handle this."
"Are you sure?"
Black Star's words carry a hint of concern, rare for the egotistical mister, but not entirely uncalled for.
The scythe mister senses the presence of her weapon and a flicker of understanding passes between them, brightened into a specific emotion by their resonance link.
She nods and the blue haired mister is gone, sprinting off into the dark spaces underneath the academy.
All that she can see are the stone pillars that hold the ceiling up in the shadows and there, directly in front of her, there is the figure of an impossibly thin boy holding a black bladed sword.
Her weapon smirks as she takes an unhesitant step forward. She should have avoided this situation. Logically, the odds of her beating the sword mister were slim. She had no idea how to beat him as she had no concept of how to properly harm the boy.
Theirs is a sick sort of faith.
Scythe and mister drown in unison for a moment, awash in cello music and the blisteringly dark sound of a piano. She restrains a laugh. Everything falls silent across their link.
Thoughts, all her own, hit her in rapid order. Her weapon is healed, marked but whole. She is stronger, faster and the boy in front of her was human. He is crazy, she notes this fact by itself, separate from the fact that his weapon can still cause harm to her weapon.
She slides into a crouch and launches herself forward. There is significant energy behind her swing and she represses her fear as the sword mister blocks the blow with the palm of his open hand. The sword mister has his weapon in a light one handed grip. His eyes are cast to the floor, head tilted to one side.
She feels their resonance link become clashing emotion.
Soul is fearing for her life and she is holding back a smile.
…
Her wavelength is absolutely singing with something he cannot properly identify.
He tries to ignore the fact that they could very well die at the hands of this scrawny pink haired male (who is already half insane)… the precedent was already there. He tries very hard to repress the nagging feeling that they are here because Maka wants another shot.
He feels her laughter flood their link and instantly he knows that despite her status as the academy's top student, an avid bookworm and a mild enthusiast for top 40's pop music… this face off is not by accident.
She has been craving this reunion and it would (if the rage weaving into her soul was any indication) be very personal.
He focuses now. The knowledge that she is out for blood is both a source of pride and worry. She slides into a crouch before she tosses the weapon aside and leaps forward, spinning on a heel and solidly connecting the heel of her boot with the boy's ribs.
He can feel the anger in her warming her up and stringing her out. He understands her method. Even if he is pissed that she cannot wield him right now. She wants to make the sword mister hurt. (And Soul has no doubt that she can do that.) But she cannot break the boy's skin.
She is yelling now and Soul watches as she lands another hard kick to his lower back. The boy stumbles forward and she is there, grabbing his collar and slamming him into a stone pillar. She turns him to face her and her gloved hand connects solidly with his lower ribs. Her forearm is at the sword misters throat and the boy is gasping for air.
She retreats a few steps and the sword mister leans against the pillar for a second before he steps forward. Despite the obvious injuries he is working with there is a glint of madness in his eyes.
Maka recovers her scythe while the thin sword mister tries to breath. He can sense a sort of controlled recklessness in her posture.
All he can think is that she cannot defeat a mister who is infected with madness. In Soul's unofficial opinion, this screwy little mister boy had already reached "too far gone" ages ago.
Her voice floats over their link, she is whispering the word "why" over and over. She wants to know why she cannot beat him if she can break every one of his bones and choke him half to death.
He feels her willingness to lay her hands on the sword mister again. She wants to hit him, her soul sings for it.
He hasn't told her much about black blood. So he keeps his thoughts short, because she will examine everything he says and he knows it.
He is aware, due to the nature of resonance, the moment she understands that she can beat the demon sword mister. He is also aware that she sees it as a battle technique instead of a mental state she may not be able to shed herself of.
He feels her soul calm and her mind quiet down as the scythe mister spins her weapon in a slow circle beside herself before holding it lightly in her left hand, blade curving toward the floor.
He pulls her into a mind-space inside of their resonance link. They are nowhere near his soul and he is grateful for that.
She is clad in the same black jacket and plaid skirt as always. He is in his sweater and sneakers, as always.
"I am going to go insane."
She was impressively calm about the whole idea, he saw a light pulse of yellow that felt like her heartbeat.
"That is basically it."
This was stupid, completely un-logical and quite possibly the worst plan she has ever come up with in the history of ever.
"Your job will be to trigger my insanity and eventually, pull me back from it. Got it?"
He nodded.
She let out a long breath and bit her lip.
"All I have to do is fight the sword mister. Simple."
A puddle appeared between them, it had the color of maroon tinted blackness. She shook her head, a slight smirk on her face before she jumped in, feet first, and was swallowed whole by the nasty puddle.
The effect was instant.
Soul felt her wavelength try to break from his and he held it close as it screamed for a higher resonance rate. Her soul was nothing but blankness and anger, pure rage and a mix of nonsensical debris.
Still their resonance rate went higher. He let it climb a bit more before he pulled them back to a more stable rate.
He watched as his mister's eyes dragged themselves off of the floor and fixated on the boy's shoulder. She had started giggling and he was dimly aware that she was dragging him across the floor as she stepped toward the thin sword mister.
Fight the sword mister?
He heard her start to giggle. In a half second she had lifted the scythe above her head and brought it down, swinging hard across her body, connecting with the blade of the sword mister.
There was an undignified sound coming from her, a vowel drawn out too long and rendered in a very girly way. She let the scythe blade scrape against the sword before she swung the blade out and down, completing the stroke as the sword mister moved to hit her side.
Automatically her arm rises, hand out, palm exposed. The black blade meets her palm, but it does not cut her. There is a moments pause before she meets the gaze of the sword mister.
Soul allows himself a quiet and very sane laugh. Fight the sword mister? She was going to unleash holy hell on the boy. She was going to cook that freaky little nut job like a toaster pastry. She was going to beat the ever-living shit out of him.
He refocused just as she gripped the middle of the staff with both hands and threw her entire body behind a blow that connected the joint of staff and blade to the boy's stomach.
The momentum threw her forward and in a display of drunken grace she plants the point of the blade into the ground and jumps onto the handle, staring in the direction the boy was thrown.
She was currently out of her mind.
He switches focus back inward just as he hears her start singing about "pretty giggles." While he is tempted to preserve that memory for the rest of his life, it is highly disturbing and just plain weird and he needs to go fish Maka out of this whole mess.
He examines the puddle that she jumped into. It is more like a lake now. Somehow he has been standing on top of its oily surface unaware that the puddle expanded, the bottoms of his sneakers are sinking into it now and he feels a slight bit of concern as he inhales a breath.
It takes him a while to find her in the dark.
In the time he spends digging through the unnamed semi-solid liquid he keeps an eye on the body of his mister. He watches her beat the sword mister nearly to unconsciousness in a manner that could only be called gleeful. There is the dim hum of pride that she uses the blunt end of his weapon form, because it won't kill the sword mister.
On the heels of that thought is the gut feeling that letting her continue to beat the sword mister (who looked a bit scared now) while she lacked better judgment was irresponsible of him.
Eventually he manages to pull both of them out of the maroon and black puddle lake thing and is surprised to find his sneakers un-stained by the entire episode.
"Soul, focus."
Right, now that Maka wasn't insane anymore she could take over her body and go back to being herself.
There was an odd silence. Soul looked up and Maka was still there, standing in front of him with a look of blank horror. He pushed his attention out past their resonance link and… oh, well that was disgusting.
Maka had somehow managed to pin the (currently) completely terrified sword mister into a headlock and was trying to fit the back of the boy's head into her mouth. There was a lot of drool and almost no dignity. Maka's body lets out a scream that is both animalistic and impossibly high pitched before dropping the boy and delivering a very hard kick to his lower spine.
The sword mister rolls forward with a murmur of protest before Maka delivers another blow, her boot connecting with the back of the boy's head.
"Oh wow."
Maka watched herself with all the pained rapture of someone witnessing a plane crash in slow motion.
"It worked."
Soul grimaces but keeps the words lighter. A congratulations of sorts.
She understood instantly that he was referring not only to her recovery from insanity, but to the sword mister as well.
She smiled.
"Now, if you would…?"
He gestures toward the air around them and she catches a flicker of what her body is doing.
She is spinning around in circles, dancing with her weapon the way one would dance with a mop. She was singing too, something about "bubbles and giggles."
Soul can feel her disgust and amusement as she takes hold of her body again. The first time her sane eyes take in the sword mister properly there is amazement. He feels it too, because like her, this is his first real look at the damage she can cause when truly left unhindered.
The boy is out cold, sprawled brokenly across the stone floor he is a mess of light bruises that have already begun to form. His leg is bent at an odd angle and his breathing is barely there. She can see how uneven his ribs seem to lay and she knows that most are likely broken.
There is a red mark across his windpipe and an indent in his sallow collar bone that appears to be another messy fracture. Soul whispers to her mind about the things she cannot see, the shots she landed on his lower back and abdomen. His tone feels cold when he informs her that there will be massive internal bruising, but that not a drop of his blood was spilled.
She can hear a hint of reverence in his voice. For a moment she lets her gratefulness slide across their link with a subtle undertone of admiration.
Theirs is a sick sort of faith.
…
END.
…
Author note: I do not own Soul Eater.
This work is now finished.
This was a slight twisting of the cannon presented in the anime. While prior chapters have not been based off of any form of cannon I tried to stick to script here.
Any further stories relating to this theme (because I will likely be making something similar for the resonance of Liz/Kid/Patty) will be posted separately.
Thank you for reading.