A/N - I have a bizarre love-hate relationship with action scenes in writing. On the one hand, it's a lot more fun that writing dialogue-heavy scenes, where I have to try and portray what essentially boils down to "he said she said" within the prose either being too bland or too ridiculously overdone. But, on the other hand, it's incredibly difficult to portray the fast-pace tense-ness of a Soul Eater fight scene in the naturally slower pace of written format.
I know I won't be able to completely capture the sheer awesome of a fight scene from Soul Eater. But I'd at least like to try and get as close as possible. Perhaps you could review and tell me what you think?
Notes and translations of the Latin will be at the end of the chapter.
DISCLAIMER: Soul Eater is the intellectual property Atsushi Ōkubo. I have no intention of monetizing my fanwork, and this is merely an enjoyable passer of time.
Chapter Nine - Graveyard Shift? Extra Classes for the Meisters? Part 3
Hook Cemetery certainly lived up to its name. The wrought iron sign declared the graveyard's name in hooked and curly letters, while the fence itself had a plenitude of hook decorations. Hooks dangled from the gnarled, twisted branches of trees that had long since shed their last leaf, silhouetted against the dim light emanating from the moon's twisted, bloody grin.
The graveyard was also distinctly colder than the rest of Death City. Granted, Nevada was never particularly warm and cozy at night, but here the slow-rolling fog and unpleasant atmosphere only seemed to exacerbate the chill in the air. Shivering, Alecto tugged her cropped-waist jacket closer to her, zupping it closed with a decisive yank. It was an exercise in futility, though, as the cold of the graveyard seemed to seep through her skin and flesh and settle deep within her bones. She hated this graveyard. The sooner they got this assignment over with, the sooner she could go home, huddle under every blanket in the apartment, and drink about a dozen cups of hot tea. And the sooner she could do that, the happier she would be.
The only thing that broke the atmosphere was the pissed-off shouting of a certain white-haired weapon. "Come out!" Soul yelled. "Nap time's over, zombie!"
"Hey, maybe we could not let the possibly-homicidal undead teacher know our exact location?" Tempus shouted back, clearly not aware of the inherent irony of his actions. "Thanks!" The golden-haired boy (who'd tied his hair back into a bun again) was practically huddling, eying the lower-hanging hooks warily. Not that Alecto blamed him. At roughly the same height as Tsubaki, Tempus was probably the tallest of the six, and as such he was at the most risk of getting one of those damned hooks caught in his hair. Or his eye socket.
Trying not to think about her best friend with a hook through his eye, Alecto pushed her personal time into desynchronizing for a few moments and looked around, the relatively slow pace of the world around her allowing her to take in the details. Tick.
The group of students were all standing in the general area of Sid's gravestone. It was a very simple gravestone; a cross propped on a small, rectangular pedestal with his first name carved into it. There wasn't even a year of birth or a year of death. It made Alecto a little sad, really. Sid was a good teacher, and he'd deserved a better gravestone.
Though, she supposed he didn't really need it, now that he was a zombie and all.
With another tick, Alecto felt her little bubble of time shift and saw everything around her slow even further. She turned to see that Tempus had joined her in desynchronizing, his soul wavelength working with hers to amplify the effects and bring his time to meet the same speed as hers. "You know," he said, "We're going to get through this. We won't get expelled."
Alecto blinked. "You don't need to try to reassure me of anything, Tempus. I'm not going to let myself get expelled." The aching worry that had plagued her all morning had been washed away by a flurry of determination. If defeating Sid and whoever had raised him from the dead was what it would take to prove to herself and others that she had what it took to be a meister, than that's what she would do.
At this point, her determination was all she had.
Tempus gave her an odd look and shrugged. "I believe you," he said. "You just didn't react all that positively to the news, that's all. I've been worrying about you lately, Ally. You've been stressing yourself out way too much, and it can't be healthy."
"I don't want to let anyone down," Alecto replied, balling her hands into fists. "I don't want to make Lord Death disappointed in me. I don't want to fail my duties to you as your meister."
"Seriously?" Tempus asked. "That's what you're worried about? Ally, you couldn't 'fail me' if you tried. So rein it in a little, okay?" he said, nudging her with his arm. "At the rate you're going, you're going to burn yourself out."
"Yeah," Alecto lied, newfound strength filling her voice, "okay."
She wasn't going to lose. She wasn't going to get expelled. No matter how long it took, she wouldn't return to the Academy until this assignment was over, restraint be damned. Qui audet adipiscitur, after all.
No one ever accomplished anything by "reining it in a little."
Tock. The two of them released the grip their soul wavelengths held on their temporal space, and time balanced itself out. Soul was still shouting at thin air. "I'm not gonna let myself get expelled over some walking dead guy! Come out you zombie bastard!" Meanwhile, Maka was clinging to the nearest tree despondently.
"I see the top students are taking this well," Tempus said.
It was Alecto's turn to shrug this time. "Well, they've worked really hard towards making Soul a Death Scythe. After all the effort they put into this, it's sort of obvious why they're upset over the idea of getting kicked out of the Academy." She could relate. But she couldn't deny that she was a little annoyed at them. If they were so upset about the idea of getting expelled, they should be helping track down Sid, not screaming and moping.
"Yeah." Tempus grinned wickedly. "It's a real dire situation we're in, if Black Star is more level headed than Maka Albarn."
Alecto felt terrible for giggling like she did. Tempus had a point, though; while Soul was broadcasting his ire to everyone within a five-mile radius and Maka was moping, it was Black Star and Tsubaki who were examining Sid's grave and actually being somewhat productive. "Hey, Tsubaki," Black Star said, "This is Sid's grave, isn't it? You sure this is where we want to start looking, after all, don't zombies get up and move around a lot?"
An excellent point. Alecto's gaze darted about, alert for any signs of movement. She'd have tried to listen for someone as well, but over Soul's shouting that in itself would have probably been an exercise in futility.
"Might as well check this place first to be sure he isn't here," Tsubaki pointed out.
"True enough," Tempus said, stepping forward and kneeling in front of the gravestone. "Though if he spent most of his time in his grave, the dirt around here would probably be a bit looser." He pounded a fist against the ground. "Now, I'm no expert on graves, but this doesn't have that whole 'recently disturbed' feel to it."
Sitting down next to Tempus, Alecto ran a hand across the carren plot of dirt and realized that he was right; the ground was pretty well-set, as if it hasn't been disturbed in at least a few days.
"Looks like an ordinary grave to me," Black Star said.
"Yes, well…" Tempus gritted his teeth. "Oh, would somebody put a damn muzzle on that idiot?"
"That idiot" he was referring to was Soul, who was still shouting. "Come out! I never even listened to your lessons! So there!" He dissolved into maniacal and hysterical laughter.
"Soul seems...a bit disturbed," Tsubaki said.
"That's one way of putting it," Tempus muttered.
Alecto got to her feet. "Hey!" she shouted. "Supprime tuum stultiloquium! Forget Sid, at this rate you're going to wake every damn corpse in this graveyard, stulte!" She didn't want to have to deal with this. She wanted to defeat Sid, find whoever had turned him into a zombie, defeat them, and save her and Tempus from expulsion. If she lost her chance because of Soul Eater, she was going to knock him into the next continent.
She turned around to see if Maka had actually started to be productive, only to find the pigtailed meister still curled up against the tree. "I always thought I was a great scythe meister, like my mother was," Maka lamented. "How can I suddenly be expelled?"
"Maka, you're not expelled yet!" Alecto exclaimed. "And you're not going to be! You're a fantastic scythe meister, you're best in the class! The only thing that's keeping you down on the ground like that is yourself! Qui audet adipiscitur!"
Maka let out a moan of despair, and Alecto figured that perhaps she was probably not the best person to around making inspirational speeches, especially to meisters that were more skilled than her.
"What's up with Maka?" Black Star asked, clearly having not heard Maka's laments. "She seems kind of down."
"Manifestum est," Alecto snapped. Everything was happening and it was cold and Soul was still shouting ("Why don't you show your ugly face!? Did it go gray or something?") and she was just so frustrated and angry and yes maybe a bit worried. Her nerves were starting to wear a bit thin, and she wished that Sid would just show his face already.
"Black Star," Tsubaki sighed reproachfully, "aren't you at least a little worried about all this?"
Black Star looked like the very concept of him being worried was completely alien. "Nah. It's not like we couldn't take this guy in a fight or anythi-"
"WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU HIDING?" Soul's voice cut through Black Star's words like a pair of scissors cut through tissue paper: swift and violently. Soul was practically steaming with anger at this point.
Black Star didn't seem to be bothered by being interrupted, instead opting to throw his arm over Soul's shoulders with a huge grin on his face. "Hey Soul!" he said. "Why don't we go piss on Sid's grave, why at you think about that?"
"Yeah! And while we're at it, why don't we take a dump on it, too!"
Alecto knew that this was just them trying another method of luring Sid out, but it was still kind of gross. And pointless. If Sid wasn't going to drawn out by Soul's unmitigated anger, what made the two of them think that vulgar taunts were going to help?
However, it seemed that Alecto was incorrect, because for a split second, the ground seemed to tremble. "Okay…" Tsubaki said, tensing up. "I think you guys can stop now…"
Then the ground burst open, and a mottled blue hand broke out of the soil and closed around Maka's ankle. The person that broke out of the earth after was… not Sid.
Well, he was, but he looked so different that he might as well have been a completely different person. His once-brown skin had turned a strange grayish-blue in hue, and his face (Alecto could still remember his smirk as he'd told her, Soul and Black Star about Lord Death's son) had been twisted into a grimace that barely resembled any expression he'd have worn. What unnerved Alecto the most, though, was the hole in the center of his forehead, a clean circle that passed both skin and skull and sank deep into Sid's head. He was very clearly supposed to be dead and buried, and yet here he was.
Alecto had known they were going after a zombie, yet she still felt unease creep into her mind, locking her joints in place. The only thing that kept her from shutting down completely was the fact that Sid was dangling Maka upside-down with one hand and clutching a sharpened stick with another.
"Are you scared, girl?" Sid said, and despite all the other ways he had changed his voice was still so undeniably Sid. "I think you are." He moved to stab the stick at Maka's throat, and Alecto moved forward.
Before she could do something, or even figure out what to do, there was a shout of "Maka!" and a circle of light and movement spun through the air. Soul had propelled himself towards Sid while simultaneously shifting his weapon form, and managed to knock Sid away. Maka fell, landing on her feet and leaping away with a practiced grace comparable to that of a cat's. "That's what Sid's become?" she said.
"Guess so."
The six students. had formed a large triangle of sorts around Sid, with weapon and meister side by side. Sid stood in the center of them, tall and stoic. He spoke. "Maka. Soul. Black Star. Tsubaki. Alecto. Tempus. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good night."
Uh. "S-salvē?" Alecto stammered, confused and uncertain.
With a grunt, Sid wrenched his gravestone out of the ground. "How have you been and all that?" he said. "I always try to remember my manners. That's the kind of man I was." He shifted the gravestone so that it was tucking under his elbow, gripping the top with his opposite hand, clearly to keep it balanced.
"Ally," Tempus murmured besides Alecto. Knowing exactly what he wanted, Alecto grabbed his shoulder and gave him a look of agreement, and he transformed into weapon form, the leather of the buckler's glove wrapping itself around her fingers and securing him in place. Black Star and Tsubaki seemed to have the same idea, as the latter changed into her chain scythe form.
"Tell me, Sid," Maka said, pulling Soul out of the ground he had lodged himself in and twirling him so that his blade was facing up, "why are you doing this?"
"Ding dong, dong ding." Sid spoke in a singsong tone, his words an obvious mockery of a school bell. The way he spoke set Alecto's teeth on edge. "Being a zombie's amazing," he said. "There are so many more things I can get away with now." While his expression didn't change from its grimace, the tone of his voice seemed to change into something more anticipative, as if he were eager for what he expected to come next. "Class is in session. I always a man to start class right with the bell. Punctuality is important."
"This'll be fun," Black Star replied, grinning. "I get to teach you a lesson now, teacher." He leaned forward into a battle stance, arms out with Tsubaki gripped tightly in his hands. "And since it's coming from me, you know it'll be a big one!"
"We don't wanna be expelled," Soul said, "so we'll take your extra lesson. But I gotta say, I don't know what we're gonna learn from a decaying piece of flesh."
"If you become a zombie," Sid said, "then death no longer looms over you. You can escape from fear and be free!"
"That's wrong and you know it!" Maka retorted.
"Right!" Tempus said. His buckler gleamed in the moonlight, revealing his face in the reflection and subsequently in the back of A. "Fear can be useful. Fear can be helpful! I fail to see any situation in which dying and turning into a zombie could possibly be helpful!"
"What happened to you, Sid?" Maka said. "You were never the type of man who would say that!"
Sid let out a tch. "You'll understand," he said, leaping forward and swinging the graveyard in a wide arc towards Maka, "when you're dead!"
With their wavelengths, Alecto and Tempus grabbed their time and wrenched it out of sync desperately. Tick. Without even giving it a second thought, Alecto bolted forward, skidding to a halt between Sid and Maka and throwing her shield arm up. She dug her heels in and prepared for the blow.
It never came.
The sound of a chain whizzing through the air was the only warning anyone had before one of Tsubaki's scythes spun into view, the chain circling around the cross of the gravestone and forcing Sid to stop in his tracks.
"Alecto! Black Star!" Maka exclaimed.
Alecto glanced over at Black Star, who'd dug his own heels into the dirt as he gripped the other end of Tsubaki's chain. "There'll be no need to thank me for the lesson. It's on the house," he said.
"Hmph," Sid said. "I never was the kind of man… to hold back!" As he spoke the last word, Sid pulled the graveyard forward, sending Black Star flying. Unfortunately for Alecto and Maka, he was flying straight towards them, and ended up knocking the both of them back a few yards. "I recommend you just give up. You one-star meisters don't have a chance of beating me."
Alecto stopped in her tracks. "What." Give up? Did he just tell them to give up?
She could hear Soul shout, "I'm hungry! Can we just get damn zombie soul already?" but it was muffled by the blood pounding in her ears. Red laced the edge of her vision, and she took a step forward.
"Give up?" she said. "Give up?! The only reason we're here at all is because of you! If we lose here, we lose everything, and you tell us to just give up?! Abi in malam rem, you bastard!"
"Sid's right, though," Maka said through gritted teeth. "He is very strong. One-star meisters like us can't compete with him. When he was alive, he was designated a three-star meister."
"Maybe," Alecto growled. "But we've got one thing he doesn't." She shifted her position, readying herself. "Time."
"Alecto, wait!"
"Ally!"
Tick. Maka and Tempus's words had fallen on deaf ears. Alecto propelled herself forward, swinging Tempus's minute spear towards his torso. If he wanted fearlessness, he was going to get it, right through his rotten, useless hea-
She thought of Sid when he was alive. She thought of the teacher who saw the best in what the students had to offer, yet wasn't afraid to admonish them when they performed poorly. She thought of the teacher who'd taught them new skills and how to perfect the skills they had. She thought of the teacher who had made damn sure that his students tried their hardest in class.
She couldn't do it. She couldn't stab Sid.
Tock.
A shallow cut. That was all the damage she did. A single, shallow cut, barely a scratch, across his upper torso that she wasn't even certain if he'd felt.. She'd held back, and she knew she was going to pay for it in about the next two seconds.
She was right. The stone of the grave collided with her side, sending her flying to the side. She crashed into the ground, tumbling into yet another gravestone. Fireworks of agony exploded in her retinas, and she was finding it a bit hard to catch her breath. Her vision blurred and doubled, and the graveyard spun around her.
Amidst the fog of pain, she could hear Tempus's panicked voice cut through the blue, clearer than a crystal pond.
"Ally!"
A/N - Oh no! Is Alecto going to be okay? Well, since this is a F!OC/Death the Kid story and Kid hasn't even shown up yet, I'm going to put my money on "yeah, she'll be fine."
Unless Nadia suddenly becomes the main character. But that would be silly.
I don't really have that much to say in regards to this chapter. It's pretty straightforward, and I don't have any cat pillows I can ramble about, so let's just get to the Latin of the day.
Qui audet adipiscitur: I've used this phrase a few times, but since it's been a few chapters, I figured I should say that this still means "who dares, wins."
Supprime tuum stultiloquium: "Quit your blathering!" Hilariously enough, Google Translate translates this to "control your foolish" which could pretty much work just as well in this scenario. Soul is being pretty foolish, making his position that well known to anyone in a five mile radius like that.
Stulte: Means "idiot."
Manifestum est: Literally means "It's obvious." While not the most grammatically correct option to go for here given the context (she's essentially trying to say "obviously"), I still think it gets the point across well enough.
Salvē: A pretty formal greeting, "salvē" could mean "good morning," "good afternoon," "welcome," and "good evening" all at the same time. Which is pretty fitting, because she's responding to Sid pretty much saying all of those things.
Abi in malam rem: The relatively literal translation is "Go to the devil!" So Alecto's essentially telling Sid to go right (back) to hell.
Chapter 10 (!) will be up pretty soon. In the meantime. Feel absolutely free to favorite and leave a review telling me what you think!
- Diana "Nocte"
