A/N - No. I'm not taking the fall for this. You know who's taking the fall for this? TV Tropes is taking the fall for this. I blame TV Tropes for the two-and-a-half week gap between chapters. Why? Because TV Tropes has RUINED my life. Every time I think "ooh, I want to get some writing done," I keep getting dragged back to that accursed site. Heck, I did it twice while writing this paragraph! That's how bad this is!
I do apologize, though. I'll try to work on my schedule better. On the bright side, next arc is an arc I really really really want to write, so I'll be getting right on that! I do appreciate that you guys have been so patient with my schedule slips.
Speaking of appreciating you guys, I'd like to thank Superhero17, truesparks, and tardis-tea-time for reviewing! To Superhero17, I say thanks and that I'm sorry I couldn't get this up sooner! To truesparks, I say thank you! I'm really glad that the combat scene worked for you, because action sequences are some of my weaker points when it comes to writing. To tardis-tea-time, I say that this review made me very happy because I do try to add a bit of poetic flare to my prose. Especially alliteration. I adore alliteration. So it's good to see that I am succeeding in that regard! :D
Notes and translations of the Latin will be at the end of the chapter.
DISCLAIMER: Soul Eater is the intellectual property of Atsushi Ōkubo. I have no intention of monetizing my fanwork, and this is merely an enjoyable passer of time.
Chapter Nineteen - Temporal Resonance - Fortune and Disaster Both Return From Europe
"So, what happened after that?" Nadia's pebble-gray eyes were as wide and as round as coins as she listened to Tempus and Alecto recounted the events of what had happened in Essen.
"Nothing, really," Alecto said, taking a small bite out of one of the cookies that Nadia had given her. This particular confection was of gingerbread make, though it wasn't person-shaped. It was soft and round and ridiculously delicious. "I managed to find my tea, we let the local authorities know that Nosferatu was dealt with, then we came back to Death City and just sort of fell asleep on the couch as soon as we got home. Well, I fell asleep on the couch; he fell asleep in his chair," Alecto said, nodding to Tempus.
"My chair happens to be incredibly comfortable and easy to relax in after a long day," Tempus said, leaning back and running his dark fingers along the arms of his chair for emphasis. "That's why it's my chair and no one else is allowed to sit in it ever."
The living room of their apartment was pretty small, only able to hold two chairs, a couch, and a coffee table, and even then actually reaching the couch was a bit of a chore. One of the chairs was a relatively recently-made swivel recliner with walnut-brown pinstripe upholstery. It was in this chair that Nadia was sprawled in, her denim-clad legs hanging over the the side of the chair. The other chair, however, couldn't be more different if it tried. It was older and had a much taller back than the pinstripe chair, with mahogany-brown leather cushioning and wood that was carved into elaborate scrolls and curls. As soon as Alecto and Tempus had moved in together and furnished their home, Tempus had immediately declared the chair to be his. Alecto hadn't bothered contesting it; between the other chair and the three-person couch, there were plenty enough seats for her to choose from.
Nadia rolled over. "Jeez, I can't believe you guys actually had to go up against a real vampire. He sounds super creepy."
Well, I don't think he was a true vampire," Tempus said. "At least, not in the sense that library books tell. He wasn't any sort of soul parasite, he wasn't some sort of undead, and he didn't need to drink blood to survive. It was just a sick addiction to him, the way souls are for him and others like him. Beyond his resistance to the effects of pain and his supremely disgusting soul, he wasn't much more than your run-of-the-mill Kishin Egg."
Nadia shuddered. "If assholes like him and Hudine are run-of-the-mill…I don't want to know what you consider to be not run-of-the-mill."
"Well, there's witches," Alecto said. "One-star meisters like us aren't actually supposed to fight those until we gather ninety-nine Kishin Eggs, but sometimes missions go wrong and students don't really have a choice."
"Then there's soul parasites," Tempus added. "That's a particular type of Kishin Egg, latches onto a person's soul while they're still alive and feast on their wavelengths, they're pretty nasty. One-star meisters aren't allowed to fight them, period. And then there's the Kishin. Big one, the most terrible of them all, the one that was the reason the DWMA was founded in the first place. Not exactly something that anyone wants to get into a fight with. Ever."
"When I said I didn't want to know, I meant it." Nadia looked around the living room, gaze scanning the beige walls for something. "Hey, why don't you guys have a clock out here or something?"
"Don't need one," Tempus said. "I've got a really good sense of time."
"Why do you ask?" Alecto said. "I thought you said your parents were giving you the day off." In a rather surprising move, Nadia had shown up early in the morning rather than late at night with the basket of gingerbread cookies, explaining the as her getting a short vacation from her work at Donald's due to particularly good test scores.
"They did. But don't you two have to go to school?"
"School starts at seven," Tempus said. "It's six forty-eight. It's a twenty minute walk that we can make in five, externally speaking." With a tick tock he was suddenly standing, stretching languidly. "Temporal desynchronization abilities, remember?"
Fweeeeeeeeeet. The sound of a tea kettle whistling in the kitchen caused Alecto to jump slightly in her seat before standing. "I do need to get my tea ready before we leave, however," she said, making her way to the kitchen. Turning off the burner that the kettle was resting on and pulling the thermos down from the nearby cupboard, she took the checked pot holder to protect her hand and moved the kettle off the stove.
"Um." Nadia's voice followed her into the kitchen. "Should I leave and come back after you two are done with school?" the blonde girl called out.
"If you want," Alecto called back. "We won't be leaving for a few minutes, though. This tea takes a while to brew." It was a pu erh hazelberry blend. While pu erh wasn't Alecto's favorite type of tea (not that she hated it or anything, she loved all sorts of teas except iced), she'd chosen this particular blend because of its rich, smooth flavor and sweet, fruity undertones. She needed something that didn't have a particularly sharp bite to it, something that would help relax her still-frazzled nerves.
As she prepared her tea, carefully measuring out the water into the thermos and pulling down the appropriate amount of tea bags, she heard Tempus speak. "Hey, Ally, you think Soul and Maka are back from their trip by now, too? They left for Europe earlier than we did. Maybe they're back by now and we can ask them how Italy was." She could practically hear his wistful smile seeping into his voice. "More specifically, how the food was."
"You'll be able to try genuine Italian cuisine someday Tempus," Alecto said. "Quit trying to live vicariously through our classmates."
"You know, the pizza as we know it was invented in Italy," Nadia said. "Just saying. Hint hint. Nudge nudge. Wink wink."
"Yeah, but that's different."
"How?"
"It just is."
Alecto rolled her coal eyes as she carefully poured the excess water in the kettle into the sink, the loud hiss of steam rising up as the hot liquid made contact with the cold steel drowning out Nadia's sharp-voiced remark. She finished preparing her tea, pulling the tea bags out of the thermos and disposing of them. Soundly closing the thermos, she walked out of the kitchen and back into the living room, grabbing her jacket off the coat and shrugging it on. "We should get going. I'm sorry we couldn't talk more, Nadia. We can meet up after school, okay?"
"Okay," Nadia said, getting out of her chair. "You can tell me more about your classmates, too! They all sound like interesting people!"
"They really are," Tempus said, straightening out his own blazer. "Hey, do you mind if I bring the rest of the cookies with me? I could share them with said classmates."
Nadia looked surprised, clearly not expecting him to suggest such a course of action. "Oh! Oh, yeah, sure! As long as you don't try to pass them off as your own, of course, because than I'd have to come over and punch you in the face for the heinous crime cookie plagiarism. That's totally a real thing, by the way."
"I'll take your word for it," Tempus said, picking up the basket of gingerbread pastries. "I'll return the basket when we next meet up. And hey, who knows? Maybe news of your delicious baking will spread across the school, so much so that even Lord Death will want to try them!"
Nadia turned beet red. "Well, I think you're counting some chickens before they hatch here."
"Nadia, there are two things in this world that I am completely certain of. One, Alecto drinks way more tea than is healthy."
Alecto looked up sharply, glowering at her partner. "Hey! Tea doesn't have any negative effects on health!"
Tempus ignored her. "Two," he continued, "your cookies are freaking delicious." He hugged the basket close to his chest for emphasis. "I bet Lord Death would love them."
"Does he even eat?" Nadia replied. "I've seen pictures of him in library books; he doesn't seem to have a mouth of any sort."
"It's a mystery that the students of DWMA have been trying to solve for centuries."
"Really?"
"Probably not."
Nadia laughed. "It was nice talking to you two! I'll probably spend most of the day down at Deathbucks, so that's where I'll likely be when you're both done with classes. Talk to you later!" She turned and left the apartment with a wave, as casually as if she lived there and was just going out for a short walk. Some part of Alecto wasn't sure what to make of that. Another part of her enjoyed the idea of friendship being so casual. She realized that she didn't actively think about how she and Nadia were friends. They just were.
She had always thought of friendship as something that was performed, an action. She hadn't thought of it as a state of existences, a noun that could exist almost effortlessly. Perhaps it was both; one didn't become friends with someone without interacting with them, after all.
Her slightly confused introspection was cut off by a hand waving up and down in front of her face. "Hello? Ground control to Major Ally?" Tempus said. "Did you hear me? I said we need to get going, you don't want to be late for classes, do you?"
"It's never bothered me before," Alecto replied.
"All right, then, let me rephrase that. I don't want to be late for classes. Can we go now?"
"Yeah, sure, sorry." Alecto stretched. "I was just thinking. Come on, let's get going." Tick.
The early class period was fairly uneventful, which could be considered a surprising turn of events when a mad scientist was the one teaching the class. Instead of yet another dissection lab, to Alecto's relief, Dr. Stein merely gave a lecture on different means of defending one's soul against a direct soul attack. To Alecto's further relief, his lecture did not include a demonstration. She drifted off into her own thoughts at points, and out of the corner of her eye she could see Tempus scrawling caricaturized doodles of their fight with Nosferatu in the margins of his notes.
It was only in the midmorning gap between classes, as Tempus and Alecto were making their way through the high-ceilinged halls and Tempus snacked on a couple of Nadia's gingerbread cookies, that something of note actually happened.
That something was Black Star.
"Soooooouuuuuulllll!" The blue-haired assassin screamed as he sprinted through the hall and past Alecto and Tempus, ruffling the former's hair and practically stirring up a cloud of dust as he paused, blinking slightly as she tried to process what had just happened. Tempus froze halfway through biting through his cookie, brows knitting together and looking over his shoulder at the rapidly-moving meister disappearing into the equally confused mass of students in the halls.
Tsubaki had been following Black Star at a somewhat slower pace, and slowed to a stop as she approached the two baffled time meisters. The expression on her gentle face was a worrying one; Tsubaki looked like she was about to start tearing up, distress and worry written across her features. "Alecto! Tempus!" she exclaimed.
"Tsubaki!" Alecto replied. "What's…" She floundered for words, settling for dumbfoundedly pointing in the direction that Black Star had went in. "Where's he…? What happened?"
"You mean you haven't heard?" Tsubaki said.
Alecto's first response to that was to look over at Tempus, who shrugged. "Haven't heard of anything," he said through a mouthful of crumbs. He swallowed the cookie in his mouth. "Black Star was shouting Soul's name, right? Did something happen? Or was he referring to a soul as in the thing that you and I need to eat a hundred of?"
"N-no, he was talking about Soul…" The concern apparent on Tsubaki's face grew even stronger, if such a thing were possible. "People are saying… that he got hurt while he and Maka were in Italy for their extracurricular assignment."
It felt like time had stopped, and Alecto knew what that felt like. She could feel the distress ripping through her being and bringing itself down on her joints, causing her to stiffen with shock. "Q-quid?! Quod occurrēbat?" she cried. "I-I mean, what happened?!"
"I don't know," Tsubaki admitted. "I was in the showers, all I heard was that Soul'd been hurt."
Trying very very hard not to think about Tsubaki showering image because that would be a really really inappropriate image for her subconscious to conjure up, Alecto looked over her shoulder, down the hall that Black Star had charged through. "H-he'd be at the dispensary, right?" she said. "I-if he got badly hurt by a Kishin Egg, they'd want to bring him there."
Tsubaki nodded. "That's where me and Black Star are headed."
"We're coming with, then," Alecto said firmly. "I want to see if Soul's going to be okay. And we'll be able to get there relatively faster, if you want. Desynchronization and all."
Tsubaki nodded, a bit hesitant. "That's probably best. We might need to catch up to Black Star before he does anything too rash. He's really upset by all of this," the tall girl said.
"Yeah, looked like it." Black Star and Soul were good friends. Whatever Alecto's opinions on Black Star's egotistical attitude and irresponsible approach to Kishin hunting were, she wasn't going to fault him for being worried about a friend's safety. She was belligerent towards the boy, but she wasn't going to be an asshole to him, especially in a situation like this.
Especially when the person whose safety was in question was someone that Alecto considered to be a good acquaintance.
Tempus shoved the half-empty basket of cookies into Alecto's arms reached his hand out towards Tsubaki. "Here," he said. "You need to hold on to one of our hands, or you won't get pulled into our little time bubble. Can't push the desynchronization out towards you," he explained. "Manipulating the temporal fabric that surrounds our bodies tends to have its limitations, you see."
Tsubaki gave a nodding reply and a small, close-lipped noise of understanding as she accepted Tempus's outstretched hand. A quick look was exchanged between Tempus and Alecto, and the latter nodded.
When Tempus was in weapon form, simultaneously desynchronizing their bubble of time was little more than an afterthought, like flexing a muscle. This was because their souls were more closely linked when Tempus was in his buckler spear shape, and their desynchronization was a single occurrence and enveloped the both of them, rather than two separate desynchronizations being performed. Alecto could only think of a couple of instances in which they had managed to nudge their temporal flows at the exact same time.
This was not one of those times.
Tick-Tick. "Damn it," Tempus said. "One day we're going to be able to do that at the same time, and actually repeat the process consistently."
"Not really important right now, though, is it?" Alecto said, hastily rearranging the foodstuffs in her arms so that she was holding her thermos of tea in one hand and the gingerbread cookies in the other. "Come on. This desynchronization won't last forever." She set off, cocoa-brown boots colliding firmly with the ground as she jogged down the hall with Tempus and Tsubaki following close behind.
Luckily, the dispensary was on the same floor that the three of them were on, and both Tempus and Alecto knew exactly where it was located and how to get there quickest. Alecto wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. On the one hand, it was always good to know how to get to the dispensary quickly in case of an emergency. On the other hand, it did betray how many times the two of them had needed to visit the dispensary during their time as students.
In either case, it wasn't long before they reached the dispensary. Alecto was thankful for this; there was only so long that she could hold a desynchronization in place before it began to give her a headache. The three rounded a corner to see the temporally-frozen scene that had started to unfold as they approached. Both Stein and Spirit were there, which made sense to Alecto. Spirit was Maka's father, it would make sense that he was worried about her and her partner. And while Stein took the "mad" in "mad scientist" to whole new levels, he was still a doctor who seemed to know his way around an operating table well enough.
What also made sense in a rather infuriating manner was the fact that Black Star was in the middle of kicking out towards the dispensary's door, a distraught expression on his face. His foot was moving at an imperceptibly slow pace, but it was definitely moving in the direction of the dark brown wood. "He know's there's a handle, right?" Alecto said flatly.
"I don't think he really stopped to think about it," Tsubaki said. The expression on her face was a mixture of sympathy and second hand embarrassment. "He's been really torn up about this ever since he heard. Still, we should stop him before he does something too-"
Tock-tock. Finding her soul wavelengths unable to uphold the desynchronization any longer, Alecto's time slipped back into the normal flow. The time flow that Tempus and Tsubaki were sharing reasserted itself an instant later, just as Black Star kicked the dispensary door clean off its hinges and barged into the room with a cry of "Soouulll! Soul! Are you okay?!"
"-rash," Tsubaki finished. Uttering a hasty "I'm so sorry about that, Professor Stein!" the black-haired weapon quickly followed after her partner. Alecto took a few steps forward before pausing at the battered door frame. She had no idea what she was going to say to Maka, what comforts someone like her could possibly offer.
Black Star didn't seem to have trouble finding words at all, though this probably wasn't a good thing. "It's going to be all right!" the blue-haired boy shouted as he leapt onto the dispensary bed recklessly and began to shake Soul's comatose form back and forth. "Black Star is here for you now! Open your eyes! One look at my big handsome and you'll be cured for su-"
Tick. "Idiot," Alecto growled, placing the tea and cookies on the floor and storming forward into the dispensary. Reaching out with her left hand and grabbing the back of Black Star's head, she yanked him off of the bed and slammed his face into the nearest wall just as time realigned itself. Tock. "Tace, stulte," she snapped. "Can't you see that this is a serious moment?" Without waiting for his answer, she tossed him aside onto the empty dispensary. bed next to Souls. He didn't move, his only reaction a pained groan muffled by the bedsheets. A small dent was left behind in the wall.
"That last bit was probably unnecessary," Tempus said quietly to her as he walked in, carrying the tea and the cookies.
Alecto shot a glance over at Maka, who held an encyclopedia-sized book in her hands, cat-green eyes obscured by her hair. Had Alecto not made a move first, she had no doubt that Black Star would have been on the receiving end up a very nasty Maka Chop. "I did him a mercy," she muttered.
Tempus didn't answer.
Crossing her arms to hide her trembling fingers, Alecto stared down at the unconscious Soul Eater. He looked awful; his skin was even paler than usual and bore an ashen complexion, and while his breath was even it was also shallow. His ivory bangs were plastered to his forehead by a thin layer of fever-caused sweat. She forced herself to look away. Damn it, this wasn't right. If she had been forced to name who in the class she thought was going to be the next Death Scythe, she'd have said Soul for sure. He and Maka were a volatile pair, sure, but they were also the top partners in the class, combined, and had embodied all of what a meister and weapon pair should be; steadfast, resilient, and good-hearted.
To see Soul laying here on the dispensary bed looking like he'd metaphorically just come back from Death's door… it just didn't feel right. Alecto made a mental oath that if she ever came across the bastard that did this, she'd give them an extra kick in the head for this.
"Sorry about that, Maka," Tsubaki said, in reference to Black Star's careless charging into the dispensary. Maka didn't reply. "...Maka?"
Alecto looked up, her gaze landing on the pigtailed meister. Her eyes were still obscured by her bangs, but Alecto didn't need to look into her eyes to read her emotions. Maka's face was turned towards the floor, her shoulders were stiff as a board and her violently shaking hands clenched into fists. Tears were running down her cheeks, which she hastily wiped off before shaking her hair away from her eyes and putting on an obviously fake smile.
Alecto was filled with the gripping urge to do something, anything that would help. A lightbulb went off in the back of her mind, and she grabbed the tea and yanked the cookies away from Tempus's grip. He let out a small whine as the basket was wrench out of his grasp, a whine that died as a flicker of light lit up in his goldenrod eyes. Putting on her best reassuring smile, she walked around to the side of the bed that Tsubaki and Maka were standing on and held the basket and thermos out to the latter. "Here," she said. "Acceptābās haec. For Soul, when he wakes up," she explained when Maka's brow furrowed in confusion. "It's gingerbread cookies and pu erh hazelberry. Tea has loads of health benefits, I'm sure it'll help him get back up on his feet. And the cookies were made by a friend of ours. They're really good."
Maka didn't say anything for a second, but then her smile became a little wider and a little more genuine. "Thank you, Alecto," she said. "I'll be sure to let him know they're from you."
Alecto smiled back.
A set of footsteps signified someone else entered the room, and a kindly, familiar voice said, "Oh my goodness. What happened to the door? From the looks of it, things have been lively in here."
Alecto and Maka both glanced over at the source of the voice: a tall, slender woman in a white doctor's coat. She had straw-blonde hair that was cut short and choppy, with the exception of two locks in the front, which were long and braided together in the front. Her narrow eyes were the color of light honey, and a faint scar cut through her left eyebrow. She wore a gentle smile on her face as she regarded the group of students.
"Doctor Medusa!" Maka said. "Good afternoon!"
"Good afternoon!" Tsubaki echoed. "I'm sorry about the door."
Black Star sat up, having clearly recovered from his face's recent familiarity with the wall. "Hey doc, what's up, are you here too check on how Soul's doing?" he said without pausing for breath as he jumped off the bed.
Medusa shook her head slightly. "Um, well… Miss Maka?"
"Yes?" Maka replied. "What is it?"
Medusa's kind expression turned into an uncomfortable, slightly sheepish cross between and smile and a grimace. "Can you do me a favor and help me out with your father? I can't get him off my leg."
Alecto glanced down, and sure enough there was spirit, clinging to Medusa's calves with metaphorical hearts in his eyes. "Oh, my darling! My dear white-coated angel!" he declared, practically swooning with misplaced affection. "Please, heal me! My heart is in need of your sweet, sweet medical lovin', only you can cure-"
THWAK.
It seemed that someone was getting a Maka Chop after all, Alecto thought as Maka brought the massive book straight down on Spirit's head. Apparently, even blood relations weren't enough to protect someone from the wrath of an irate Maka Albarn. The crimson-haired Death Scythe was now the one occupying the empty dispensary bed, a dazed expression on his face.
Without the dead weight on her leg, Medusa's face returned to the kind gentleness it had possessed previously. "Soul had a difficult lesson, didn't he?" she said. "He was in pretty bad shape when he arrived."
Maka's face fell. "Yes. I'm sorry," she said, her gaze turning downwards towards the tiled floor. "It's all my fault that he was hurt."
Medusa stepped forward and placed her hands on Maka's shoulders reassuringly. "But he's okay, now," the school physician said. "And as for you, this will only make you stronger, Maka."
Alecto agreed with Medusa. Soul was going to be fine, he and Maka would continue to prove themselves as the best partners in class Crescent Moon, and whoever did this was going to have their ass kicked, one way or another.
Omnia bene erunt, she thought.
Everything was going to be all right.
A/N - Ha ha ha ha ha. "Everything was going to be all right." That's so adorable, Alecto.
Dramatic irony aside, I am really glad to have this arc over and done with. Why? Because next arc is one I've been wanting to do for a while now. Spoiler alert: It's going to involve a lot of a certain son of Death... :3 Oh, Kid, I've missed you. It's been a whole three chapters since I've written about you!
You know, the funny thing is, that tea wouldn't actually be that terribly helpful in helping Soul get back on his feet. Tea has loads of benefits, sure (pu erh tea, the kind in this chapter, helps with cholesterol, and green tea can help reduce one's risks for many types of cancers), but i don't think hazelberry tea will help much against a demon sword to the freaking chest. Oh, well. I've heard it tastes nice, at least.
The more you know.
Speaking of knowing, here's the translations for the Latin in this chapter:
Q-quid?! Quod occurrēbat?: "W-what? What happened?" Probably a little redundant of a footnote considering Alecto clarifies what she means literally the very next sentence, but whatevs.
Tace, stulte: Basically translates out to "Shut up, idiot."
Acceptābās haec: "Accept this."
Omnia bene erunt: Literally translates into "All will be well." When I tried to find the most appropriate way of phrasing it, I was stuck between "omnia bene" and "omnia bene erunt," as a Google search had given me both of these as an answer. I went with the later one because the last word, "erunt," is a third-person, future-tense form of "to be," whereas "omnia bene" on its own is just present-tense "everything's okay," which wasn't what I really wanted in this context.
Chapter 20 heralds a new arc, and will be up relatively soon. In the meantime, please feel free to favorite and leave a review!
- Diana "Nocte"
