This isn't a prompt for Soma Week, but it leads up to it. Here's my Gone AU!
Not again.
She can't go through this again.
Maka was watching her history teacher write on the white board with a bored expression on her face when she disappeared.
Poof.
Ms. Marie was gone.
If you blinked, you would have missed it. You would have missed the Expo marker fall to the ground with a clatter. You would think you were hallucinating.
Maka immediately looked at Black*Star who had an equally startled look on his face. For once, he was acting mature, because he knew how bad it was going to get if what they thought was happening really was happening.
Hushed, confused whispers surrounded her, like a suffocating noose tightening around her neck. All because she was in this position before, and she did not want to go through it again.
Maka pitied them, as well as despised them, because they had no clue what was going on, had no clue how bad it was really going to get. Was ignorance really bliss?
Then again, she apparently didn't know anything either. She was sixteen and she was still here… Wasn't the cut off age fifteen? Wasn't that what happened when all of the adults kids over the age of fourteen disappeared three years back?
Black*Star clenched his jaw and nodded at Maka when she motioned her head towards the door. They needed to know if this was happening to other classes, if the teachers disappeared in there as well.
Maka and Black*Star peaked their heads outside of the doors, looking up and down the hallways. The class got silent behind them, curious as to what they were doing. Maybe they had answers.
They saw Soul and Tsubaki walk briskly toward them in the eerily silent hallway. Black*Star and Maka walk out of the classroom to meet them, ignoring the shouts of confusion that were coming from their classmates. By the look on Soul and Tsubaki's face, things were not looking up.
Soul was the first to speak, "What the hell's going on? Azusa just…" He couldn't say anything without sounding insane.
"Did she disappear out of thin air? Like she poofed?" Black*Star offered.
Soul nodded slowly. Maka could see his worried glances. Not for himself, but for her. He was stupid like that, putting herself over him.
Tsubaki looked at Black*Star, seeing how hard his eyes were and how he clenched and unclenched his fists. "Black*Star, what's going on?"
Black*Star hesitantly opened his mouth, but Maka cut him off, "Hold on, I want to see something."
Maka briskly walked to Dr. Stein's room and opened the door, peering inside. Seeing that the older teacher was nowhere to be seen, she asked one of the students, almost fearing the answer, "Is he gone too?"
Ox, who knew Maka from student council, nodded, "What do you mean too? Is your teacher gone?"
Maka cursed silently, and looked around the classroom, ignoring his question, "Is anyone else gone?"
A girl in the back meekly spoke up, close to tears, "Janine's gone. She just… she—!" The girl couldn't continue as she tried to hold back her sobs.
Maka twirled one of her pigtails, a nervous habit she developed long ago. She looked at the distressed girl and gently asked, "How old was she?"
The girl's friend spoke, rubbing soothing circles on her back, "She turned eighteen a couple days ago, I think."
So eighteen was the cut off age. Maka wondered if anyone younger disappeared as well.
"God dammit…" Black*Star muttered next to her. She jumped not realizing he was there. He smirked down at her, despite the circumstances, "Not time to get jumpy yet, bookworm."
She scowled at him, "Shut up."
Soul came up behind her and gripped her shoulders in comfort, laying his head in the crook of her neck, "Whatever's going on, we'll get through it. Just calm down, okay?"
She swallowed her oncoming anxiety and leaned against Soul. She couldn't freak out, not when people she cared about needed her.
She closed her eyes for a second, and then opened them again, a newfound determination burning deep within her. "We need to find Kid and the Thompsons. Then we need to get out of here."