Chapter Two: Quiet Riots

Soul was more surprised than Spirit was when he witnessed Jacob trailing Maka down the hallway as told the rumor. He blinked and stared after them for a while. He heard Liz mention, "So Maka's got a new partner, huh?"

"Yeah," Soul answered. It felt unceremonious somehow. The contract between himself and Maka had ended but they had interacted nonchalantly as though it had not. There was no sense in behaving like strangers besides: the way Kidd was going they could be paired up again in the near future like the good old times.

Where Spirit wept Soul wrestled quietly with feeling uncomfortable.

Liz noticed his hesitance, "How do you feel about it, Soul?"

"Huh? Whatever: I mean Maka's been doin' a lot of missions lately, right? She'll need a consistent partner."

That's not what I meant, really, Liz thought. "At any rate she's going to have to train him until he comes up to her level."

Soul didn't say anything more of the topic after that. He began talking about what he and a compact Shibusen team had witnessed in Russia.

Where a majority of witches were dissuaded at joining the mortal realm there were factions popping up all over the world passionate about proving that witches and humans couldn't live together. There was one instance of a witch teaming up with an infamous anti-Shibusen group in Baghdad, further complicating international relations. Soul had gone to Russia to talk on a panel about recent events. Among many of the questions one was the long awaited: "What does it feel like to be the last Death Scythe?"

He had replied, "It feels like I'm an emblem for positive relations between the human and witch races. When Shinigami- sama bestowed on me the title of Last Death Scythe it wasn't a declaration of power or rubbing the irony of humanity's weapons in witches' faces. It was recognition of a long standing war in which both parties were held accountable and a promise that witches wouldn't be hunted so long as Shibusen can help it."

"So in other words, you're an icon of peace?"

Soul smirked, "Ironically I'm also a kick-ass weapon. There's no running from that."

Maka was impressed. Jacob knew how to move around a partner. His sleek axe form she found neat to use and easy to handle, slender in aesthetic design and pleasantly weighty. As a scythe technician she missed the long slender staff and accommodating had been her biggest hurdle.

She practiced with Jacob now in the span of time she would have been using reading. She learned that her range had become far shorter but her reaction had changed. Without a long pole there was a door opened to different maneuvers.

"Ha! Hua!" she breathed out with each stroke and thrust. She lunged forward and performed a flurry of attacks. She twisted on her pivotal foot and kicked up and out at the throat of an invisible foe. She was quick on her feet and was throwing in punches as much as she was sweeping around smooth precise arcs. "Ha! Huah! Huh!"

"Getting tired?" Maka asked suddenly between breaths.

Jacob rasped, "You can tell?"

"Have you forgotten who you're taking to?" she smirked.

Jacob maladroitly fell into his human form.

Maka said, "Your break is short. We still haven't resonated our souls completely."

"You expect to do that in one day?" Something in his tone was stressed and incredulous, panicked even to his own ears.

Maka's response was cool in contrast. "It's not impossible, it just take a bit of opening up."

Jacob was lying on the wooden ground. He looked at Albarn when she was moving towards the vending machine. She was a slender elegant young woman, focused and brilliant; notorious for her strength and courage and rare abilities and Giriko soul. Had the rearing of witches' souls been sanctioned he would have been her Death Scythe in five months or less.

"We should go into the field," Maka said suddenly.

Maka wasn't powerful but she was lithe. His body was aching but he could feel himself improving as the hours passed. How many kishin eggs had they gotten since the night began? New York was unsurprisingly a corrupt city. Its urban scene became their playground.

For the fourth time that night Jacob returned to human form. He felt stiff and rotated his joints. Beside him Maka regarded the city. The sweat had dried from her skin with all the jumping the pair had been doing, but within their resonance he could sense her tiredness as diminutive as it was to his own.

Jacob said, "Maka, why did you go so long without a partner?"

She turned to him but her expression was distracted. "Hm?"

He took the opportunity to rephrase: "Rather, what made you finally accept me as your partner?"

She looked past him, his interested face beneath his hoodie, how he was leaning back against the wall to hide his trembling knees. Her vision snapped back to the city. They were on a rooftop. She eventually answered, "Papa's not going to be around forever."

"Crow-cro'-crow."

Maka stiffened and stared at some unseen thing suddenly. A terrible premonition coursed through her like thousands of tiny spasms. They made her blood go cold, the muscles in her shoulders tense, and her stomach though empty felt sick. This unmistakable reaction is…?

"Maka?" Jacob asked warily. He walked to her.

"Crow-cro'-crow!"

"Transform!" Maka shrieked. A blast scoured from the face of the earth the roof where Maka and Jacob had been scarcely an instant ago. Attacks zoomed at her, writhing and fluttering like a life of their own. At her prompt Jacob danced over her twirling fingers and the beams of energy bounced off of his blade. Maka kicked off of a wall and swung onto a ladder in a random back alley.

"Shouldn't we get out of here?" Jacob asked restlessly. "That was a witch, right?"

"If it was a witch," Maka said, staring through the dust that had yet to clear, "then she's violating the treaty. We need to identify her at the very least. How are you holding up?"

"I'm fine."

She appreciated the tone in his voice. He was aching, but he was standing by her with great resolve. She smirked and cried, "Right, then let's go!"

Soul remembered overhearing first year students praise Maka when she was out of earshot. They were mostly hushed female voices: "Isn't Albarn-sempai so cool? She's so elegant and collected."

"She's a woman though. It's such a waste."

Soul had scoffed.

"Weapons must be lining up to be her partner," the first female said after pausing. She'd probably heard Soul and dismissed it as nothing. She continued, "I mean she's partly responsible for the Last Death Scythe's final form, you know? And with a Gorgon's soul no less."

Their voices were disappearing like they were walking away and Soul remembered Maka whining that no-one wanted to be her partner. Though he had joked at the time that it was due to her lack in sex appeal, it was probably more due to her personality. Maka was violent. She was tough to get along with. Maka fought against her partners as much as she fought against mutual opponents. She was hard-working and quick thinking: she could be reckless. One had to be patient and forgiving with Maka.

Aside from her incendiary nature pursuing weapons were probably in low supply because he, Soul, was around. There were many who assumed that Maka Albarn accompanied the Last Death Scythe Soul "Eater" Evans on his infamous missions despite that he and his former partner now performed their lives on two totally different schedules.

These thoughts were in his head because Kidd had mentioned it in passing that Maka needed a consistent partner. While she was performing her duties splendidly with her father, Death the Kidd needed Spirit at his side. "He's a part of the old 'government', if you will," Kidd had explained lightly in Soul's, Patricia's and Elizabeth's presences one evening. "While I am striving to change things for the better for Shibusen and the wider world, I still need the older generations to guide me on my way there."

It was like talking to the ruler of the world.

"Soul," Kidd had said, "you've been Maka's partner. I want you to choose the best weapon for her from this list."

And Soul was handed a folder bursting at the seams with profiles. Soul blurted, "What? I'm supposed to go through all this? Just let Maka pick her own damned weapon!" This was before Jacob had been apprehended by said meister.

"I want to narrow down the recommendation," Kidd replied coolly. "Just pick the top five, alright? I'm counting on you."

Shortly after that, though Shinigami- sama had been notified that Maka was training with an axe named Jacob, Kidd hadn't changed Soul's mission. He insisted that Maka be equipped with the best than start from the ground up. Soul almost found himself saying that he could be Maka's partner again if Kidd was that concerned, but as a weapon of god he could not say such words so easily.

His position was not the same as being the weapon of a mortal. It was a role slowly being learned.

And so Soul went home and shifted files around and began to read in the dead of night. It was while he was doing this mission that the door uncharacteristically opened. Scared beyond his wits, Soul's rapid reaction had him slam himself into the wall back first and stare at the door where a thin girl appeared.

"Soul?"

"Maka?" he asked incredulously, "What are you doing here?"

She opened the door further and half-stepped inside. "I just returned from New York. Nygus ran me out of DWMA. She says I shouldn't sleep there anymore."

That explains so much, Soul thought to himself. "Why were you in New York?"

"A routine mission," she replied vaguely. She noticed the files on his desk. "What are those?"

The means of my replacement, he thought. "A sort of man-hunt on behalf of Kidd."

"Oh."

He noticed for the first time that she was still dressed in her battle uniform. "You came in recently?"

"An hour ago. I was writing a report. Jacob and I were attacked in New York by a witch."

"She got away?"

"Yes. Her description matches those of a witch in a group who stirred up trouble in Austria three weeks ago. I think she may be targeting Shibusen directly." She sighed. "I'm beat. I could use a good book right now."

He looked at the profiles. He'd narrowed it down to twenty but…"Hey Maka."

"Yes?"

"If you had to pick a weapon again for your partner, what type would it be?"

"It's obvious, isn't it?"

He looked at her quizzically.

"A scythe."

Author's Note: Soul's last name and his brother's first take from the names of famous western jazz musicians, Bill Evans and Wes Montgomery respectively. I had once thought of writing a fan-fiction in which Soul's family would appear named Bill and Montgomery (or perhaps Bill Montgomery) and it was with this in mind that had finished reading the manga in hopes of finding ideas about his background. But I instead got more usable information from a random Wiki that spoke to an unnamed grandmother.

I personally really dislike original characters however. Too often authors tend to use OC's to disrupt the natural pattern of the main protagonists' personalities. Personality retention is to me one of the most important details in writing fan-fiction, lest of course it's a parody. Of course in alternate universes personalities will change because the context in which they were reared is entirely different. However there are core things to each character that should never change, I think: its makes them recognizable.

Also note that I switch between DWMA and Shibusen. I understand the former to relate to the academy and the latter to speak about the organization of which the academy is a part, though in the anime they're referred to the same thing.

I received a review describing Crona's appearance. I'll keep this in mind: I hadn't considered Crona's story as well.