I've never been to a Christmas market, though they sound delightful: street markets are precisely my cup of tea.
The Christkindlmarkt is so extremely culturally German, however, that it got an entire unit in my German language class, so I'm not flying entirely blind. There's other stuff Arya didn't mention, like the Christkind pagent and carols, but they're mostly religious and thus of little concern to either me or her.
April 8th, 2024
Arya's POV:
"I'm just saying, it feels so… cringey," I said as we slid down an icy patch of rooftop.
"It's traditional," Rex insisted as we jackknifed around the corner via me catching one hand on a drainpipe to carry my momentum in an arc. "It enhances things!"
"I refuse to believe that shouting an attack name does anything to increase its oomph," I said firmly, snowflakes scattering around my feet as we pounded along the slanting edge of the roof and then leapt off across the gulf of the street.
"Well, we should at least name the attack," he pleaded. "Something so we know what it is?"
"Flash Wing?" I suggested, and then swerved as our target turned and flung back a loose coil of rope, which expanded improbably before wrapping like a bola –with incredible swiftness– around the chimney I had ducked behind.
"That's so literal!"
"You're the one who wanted to name it," I mumbled, peeking out again and then hauling myself off after our fleeing shadow.
"And you don't give the traditional warning, either."
"The what?" I asked blankly as I cleared the crest of a roof, seeing the medieval skyline of Düsseldorf spread out before us. The target was momentarily outlined against the snowy rooftops, his maroon overcoat flapping around multiple things which I was choosing to describe as spider-like limbs. From what I could tell, the ones sprouting wildly out of his back were busy weaving a new length of rope.
"You know, when you challenge a Kishin Egg according to the DWMA standards?"
"What, the whole such-and-so, you've done wrong, your soul is now mine shit?"
"Yes!"
"No!"
I did feel a little bad about continuously cutting off Rex's long-cherished hopes and dreams of traditional EAT kickassery, but, well. Standing around and shouting the name(s) of my attacks was so deeply camp, the thought of actually applying it in real life with any level of seriousness made me shudder.
Snow rustled and slid down towards the gutter as I dove aside from the next shot of entirely-too-prehensile rope, almost skidding off the edge of our latest roof.
"Ich kann mich nicht fangen, Heißluftgebläse!" our prey shouted gleefully, all but clicking what heels he still possessed as he pranced rapidly away.
"Halt der Mund, Arsegiege!" I shouted back, levering myself up with Rex and giving chase.
"Do I even want to know what you just said?" he sighed wearily, and I made an offended noise.
"I'm not that bad."
"Well, you do tend to- look out!"
I jumped as rope hit the snowy tiles at my feet, then twisted in midair as more coils lashed out in my direction. A frantic few seconds later, and I'd caught the end of one, wrapped it around my wrist, and yanked to send the Kishin Egg sliding towards us.
"Fucking whatever!" I shouted, slicing Rex out horizontally with my other arm in a wing-like flash of bluish light. The Kishin Egg keened, writhed, and burst into a ball of whirling black ribbons as the leading edge of that attack slashed through it, and a red, crusty-scaled soul drifted meekly down to hover above the rooftop.
Rex writhed and transformed out of my hand as I let the rope fall slack, staring at me with an appalled expression.
"We are not naming that attack Fucking Whatever!" he gasped, all but choking on air at my audacity.
"Paladin, then," I shrugged as he stepped over to retrieve our twelfth soul. "I don't care, Rex, really I don't."
"Pahahin, hen," he agreed quickly with his mouth full, evidently happy to settle on that before I opted for anything worse, and then swallowed.
***Time Skip***
"Sorry again for dragging us out to another cold mission, but I thought this one would be easy to get done with quickly," I said as we stepped back out onto the street from the MAD –Militärischer Abschirmdienst, Germany's version of the CIA– office that we'd been coordinating with for this mission.
"It's fine," Rex said, tugging his gloves a little neater as our breath plumed in the crackling air. "It only took us a night, so we'll be back a whole week before Christmas; which means that we can go to Maka and Soul's party."
I hummed. In lieu of available relatives –Maka's mother was god knew where, and she'd rather drink poison than spend any amount of quality time with her father; to the best of my understanding Soul had estranged himself from his hoity-toity family; Tsubaki's family was Japanese and thus A) not in the country and B) not interested in the holiday; and Blackstar and the Thompson sisters had no surviving relatives– Maka and Soul had invited everybody to their apartment for a fun casual Christmas party.
This "everybody" apparently included us, which I had mixed feelings about, but whatever. One could not make an omelet without cracking eggs, and one could not bond with shounen protagonists without getting sucked into their every public social activity.
Alas.
"Since we're in town and we've got a while to kill before the plane comes in, we should probably visit the local Christkindlmarkt if we want to get some nifty presents for everyone," I said, and received a baffled side-eye.
"Krist-kindle-what-now?" Rex asked, and I stuck my gloved hands in the pocket of my Russian coat.
"It's a street market they traditionally hold in the town square around this time of year," I said. "Kind of angled towards the younger generation –hence, Christmas kid's market. They sell gingerbread and bratwurst and Glühwein and stuff like that, and ornaments and toys and all sorts of other tchotchkes outside the food stalls."
Rex perked up.
"That does sound fun…"
A few hastily chattered directions with fellow streetgoers later, and we were en route to a quite frankly offensively picture-perfect Christmas wonderland, which was beginning to get into proper gear as evening fell.
It had everything: warm yellow lights glowing in fairyland-esque strands above our heads, huge pine trees bursting with red bows and twinkling rainbow lights, old iron-wrought street lamps with hanging wreaths; and of course, since this was held in an older part of town, plaster-and-timber buildings that could have been coughed out from a fairytale lining the streets around us. There was even a perfect carpet of powdery snow overlaying everything.
Like I said; offensively perfect. If somebody showed you this scene in a snowglobe, you'd accuse them of overdoing it.
"Right," I said, smacking my hands together and rubbing them eagerly as Rex looked around everywhere with wide eyes. "Let's wander around first, and see what we can find before we decide on buying anything. Rex?"
"There's skating," he said longingly, and I followed his shining gaze over to a decently-sized ice rink surrounded by a chest-high cheerily-painted red wooden wall.
"Oh. Huh. Yeah, I guess."
"…can we… can we go?"
I blinked.
Responsibility put up a brief struggle, which it swiftly lost when fun put a knee in its groin and simultaneously planted an elbow in its kidney.
"Sure," I said, and looked at my watch. "I mean, we can do that, then start looking around. We need to be done by… eh, nineish? It's when the market closes, anyway, so we kinda have to be done at that point… so, yeah. That's how we'll need to budget our time."
"Mm," Rex hummed absently, already drifting as if hypnotized towards the rink. Seeing all the skaters swooping and gliding around did look fun, although I had to wonder if half the appeal for him was the sheer novelty of any kind of winter fun whatsoever. Even in the eclectic madhouse that was Death City, I doubted that there were many –if any– indoor ice rinks.
Still, this promised to be entertaining.
I smiled and reached for my money.
***Time Skip***
Maka and Soul's apartment, a few days later, was decorated much more quietly. There were strands of tinsel over the doors and window frames –I caught Blair's eyes fixing on them more than once with a certain level of dilation– and a few bows and garlands of evergreen around the lamps and focus pieces of the room. There was even a smallish Christmas tree in one corner, a little shorter than I was but still decently decorated with strands of cut glass and twinkling ornaments.
Kid, I noticed, was working very hard not to pay attention to the decorations. Poor guy. His OCD must be itching him something terrible, what with all the artfully off-center decorations: it was hard to get things perfectly symmetrical when branches, pine needles, and draping garlands were involved. Even though he had gone so far as to sit with his back to the tree –by far the worst offender– I could still spot a sheen of sweat on the back of his neck.
This was (technically) our first time actually meeting him and the Thompson sisters: we knew Blackstar and Tsubaki and Soul, and Maka peripherally through them, and we'd heard about Blair –who was currently wearing what might generously be considered a fur-trimmed red minidress and more honestly be considered a stripper Sanata outfit – but Kid and his partners had, as yet, been only friends-of-friends.
Aside from the subtle tension –which noticeably twanged whenever his eyes landed on some of the decorations– Kid seemed… smooth, I guess was the best way to describe it. I knew from my perspective as an outside observer, of course, that he tended to project a polished and controlled demeanor when he wasn't being neurotic, but watching the shift of his arms, the way he'd tilt his head slightly to listen to Rex as he described our misadventures from trying chestnuts and mulled wine at the Christkindlmarkt… it was almost eerily perfect.
Kid moved precisely when and where and how he had to, and every moment was executed like all his joints had been oiled; what was spooky about this was that it seemed to be unconscious and unintentional. That, combined with his heterochromia –a thick ring of darker gold around his pupils– made Kid just a little too inhuman for my comfort. His throwaway line in the manga about being unable to dye the three white lines in his hair because his body rejected all forms of poison made me wonder how, precisely, all the elements of his physiology bonded together –because he could certainly bleed, and bleed red at that.
I did not mention this to Rex. He'd think I was being all Witchy again, musing about possible experiments.
Although… Kid's origins were never discussed at any length in the anime, beyond being Lord Death's son and a Grimm Reaper. In the manga, at least, he was a fragment that Lord Death had split off from himself and –molded? incarnated?– into human form, meaning that Kid had no biological mother. He was also deliberately made incomplete, so that he could learn and grow and assimilate understanding of the world naturally –a mistake with Asura that Lord Death was apparently not keen to repeat.
Kid was human enough where it counted. I did know that much.
"You guys went ice skating?" Maka asked, raising her eyebrows from the depths of her hideous red Christmas sweater, which she was stubbornly wearing despite the desert temperature because-it's-a-holiday-tradition-shut-up-Soul.
"Yeah. I will admit, Rex did not eat nearly as much shit as I expected," I said idly, scratching my cheek. "Since I figured, you know, desert environment, he's probably not had much opportunities to learn."
"I told you, it's basically the same skillset as rollerblading," Rex groaned from beside me, rolling his eyes at maximum velocity. "I'm not completely helpless without you, you know."
"Eh." I shrugged.
"Didja guys do mistletoe together?" Blackstar asked with a grin, wiggling his eyebrows outrageously.
Tsubaki squealed, bristling with alarm –literally, her outline spiked and shivered like an electric graph– as Soul coughed in surprise. Maka glared at Blackstar, apparently outraged on our behalf, as Kid and the Thompson sisters blinked in curiosity, being far enough out of our circle of acquaintanceship that they had no idea of any underlying context here. Blair, of course, looked thrilled.
I raised an eyebrow.
"That's not really something they have at the Christmas markets," I said. "It's food stalls and street vendors and whatever other attractions they can squeeze in."
"Yeah," Rex coughed, and I glanced sideways to see him setting down his plate of gingerbread with a wince, thumping his chest with his other fisted hand. Poor bastard much have choked. "Plus –no offense, Arya– but you are the last person in the world I'd consider for that. No offense."
"You said that twice, but none taken," I replied.
And it wasn't, too. The very thought of locking lips with a (presumed) Witch was probably enough to make Rex's life flash in front of his eyes.
"Awww," Blair whined, her feline ears drooping when no fun –drama– was forthcoming. "You guys are boring."
"Don't worry," I said, straight-faced. "After Liz and I have finished our whirlwind romance and she leaves me sad and alone on a beach someplace, I'll fall into your loving arms and give you entertainment galore."
"If I'm dumping you, it won't be on a beach," Liz replied without looking up from where she was clipping her nails, presumably performing some part of her beauty routine. She did glance up as everyone laughed, though, and we shared a smirk and a lightning-quick wink.
"Yeah!" Patty chimed, cupping her chin and planting her elbows on the back of the couch Kid was on. "Tons of dumping grounds waaaaay better than that!"
"I wonder, what locations would most people prefer to have a break-up in?" Kid mused aloud, which was enough of an odd topic from him that I wondered if it was a subtle way to redirect us from going down the rabbit hole of Liz and Patty grew up on the streets in Brooklyn and let's not talk about what they know about body-dumps.
"Dump me wherever," Soul said immediately. "Coffee shop. Old date spot. Side of the road someplace. S'long as you take me aside and don't make it this whole public thing, I'm yours."
"Not yours," I felt compelled to point out, and he snorted, raising both hands in amusement.
"Whatever."
"Getting dumped at a special date spot would ruin all the memories for me," Maka said with a frown. "Maybe… I think I agree with Soul about the café, though. Sit the two of us down, have it out. Nice and clean."
"Gotta be efficient about even your breakups, I see," Soul drawled, rolling his eyes, and Maka's eye twitched as she withdrew a book.
"MAKA CHOP!"
"I like Arya's beach idea," Tsubaki said over the steam rising from the dent in a twitching Soul's skull. "The two of us spending some time together, trying to finish it out with the good. Make one last lovely memory."
That was disgustingly sweet. I loved it.
"This kinda thing ain't my problem, 'cause nobody who dates the amazing Blackstar is ever gonna dump me," Blackstar sniffed, folding his arms and nodding once to himself. "I'll treat 'em right."
We all rolled our eyes, although it was with a certain level of fondness.
"Some guy dumps me, I'll take him for everything I can get," Liz said, with an aggressive snip of the nail clipper. "Have the bastard pay through the nose, and if he seems like he won't pay up, I'll make sure we have it out in public and throw a huge crying fit."
Can you claim palimony for dating…? I wondered morbidly.
"Saaame~" Patty giggled happily, before a shadow flickered across her normally-bubbly expression. "Except I'd probably punch him first. Yeah. Make sure he's real sorry… get him where it hurts…"
Everyone shivered.
"I suppose I'm with Blackstar," Kid said, much to our collective surprise. He gave a light, weary sigh when we all swiveled to look at him, sitting on the couch in his crisply-ironed glory. "I've had enough offers already –most of them political– that I don't think I intend to even begin dating unless it's someone I'm sure I can fully commit to. So, I suppose my hypothetical breakup location is a bit of a nonstarter."
"I've had enough problems with regular partners, I'm not going to start worry about dating," Rex agreed, munching and swallowing his latest bit of gingerbread. "But I guess, if I did, I'd be with Soul? That kind of thing… ugh. Not in public."
"Fair enough," I said.
"What about you, Arya?" Tsubaki asked, tilting her head slightly. "Where would your ideal breakup spot be?"
I blinked, then opened my mouth.
"Uh… ehhhh… I mean… I guess… I've never thought about it before?" I said slowly, working my thoughts through aloud. "I mean, yeah. I don't think I've ever really even thought about dating, much less breaking up with someone."
Looking back on my opportunities… I'd been sixteen when I first started this ill-advised bout of isekatis, and I'd had the (mis)fortune to be landed in an anime that, while full of bishounen, also had a cast that were physically four or five years older than me on average and mentally four or five hundred years older than me across the board. Fun to coo over when they were on the opposite side of a screen, sure, but not exactly serious date material.
And then Black Butler, the cast of whom was varying levels of traumatized, Victorian, and a teensy bit FUBAR. Nobody had nice things in Black Butler –or if they did, they didn't have 'em long. Most of our ages were still in disparity, too: pretty much all the people I interacted with were either too young or too old, sometimes by several decades. The people that had once made fun eyecandy or compelling characters, once again, did not make stellar (theoretical) suitors when I met them in real life. And there was the culture clash, too, something that had not been an issue in Hetalia.
Being here, in Soul Eater, was the first time I'd been regularly interacting with people even close to my age group for almost two years. Which I was not going to suddenly start crying about because holy fuck, when was the last time –before meeting these guys– that I got to spend time with my peers and pass dumb questions around the circle like this? When had I last gotten to just relax and hang out?
I sniffed loudly and rubbed a finger under my nose. Stupid Christmas emotion-amplifying mojo.
"So. Anyway. Uh, yeah," I said, trying not to focus on the fact that I couldn't remember when the last time had been. "No idea, I guess. Somewhere. At some time. Blair?"
She raised a slow eyebrow.
"You really think people are breaking up with me?" Blair drawled after a moment.
We all looked at her. Curves like a slinky, with the bounce levels of rubber-hose animation and the perkiness of radio antennae, plus supermodel legs, flawless skin, long hair with two quirky curls –as well as cat ears, a tail, and manicured pointy fingernails, because she wasn't fetishistic enough already– all came together to form a body that Blair clearly had optimized showing off to the max in a variety of skintight outfits.
"…I wasn't aware you pursued any relationships," Kid said diplomatically after a moment, taking a sip of his eggnog as a bubble of blood burst from Soul's nostrils and trailed down his lips.
"Damn sexy cat," he muttered, hastily picking up a napkin and holding it to his nose as Maka glared holes into the side of his head. I wasn't sure why she even let Blair stay in the apartment to begin with, if she hated the fanservice shenanigans so much –I had to assume it was mostly guilt for taking one of Blair's nine souls and breaking her window(s), as well as the increasingly desperate rationalization that Blair is a Monster that can take human form, she's probably mostly stuck on the cat programming that doesn't understand why humans bother with things like clothes and modesty and monogamy.
"Ah, that reminds me, how is work at Chupa Cabra's?" Tsubaki asked as she clasped her hands together, all but manhandling us past the awkwardness in the room as she smiled cheerfully at Blair.
"Same as ever," Blair yawned, showing pointed incisors –because of course she did. "The boys like Blair, so I was employee of the month again."
Huh. I didn't know cabaret clubs had employees of the month.
"We put up some bows and those sparkly garland things for the holiday, and Risa got in trouble for messing with one the light bulbs and putting it in her costume." Her ears twitched, perking up a little. "My food slaves have been giving me plenty of yummy treats lately, I guess."
A bead of sweat ran down Rex's face.
"Food… slaves?"
"Blair goes around Death City in cat form and suckers people out of their food," I leaned in to whisper to him behind one hand.
"But enough about me!" Blair chimed, bouncing to her feet; and the key word there was bounce. Soul made a gurgling noise as blood trickled from one side of Blackstar's nose, and Rex looked in the other direction so fast I was afraid he'd snap his neck. Kid was the most composed, but his fair skin made it pretty obvious that his face was pinker than normal as he suddenly found the tabletop absolutely fascinating. "It's time to open presents!"
There was an ever-so-slightly bloodthirsty gleam in Blair's eyes as she said that, and I had to wonder just how much she was looking forward to messing around with the loose wrapping paper. She might be shaped like a human, but her cat instincts were, historically, fairly strong.
Christmas was something of an informal affair between the people gathered here, as I'd mentioned; either our families were not available –me, Blackstar, Liz, and Patty– or not applicable –Soul, Maka, Tsubaki, and Kid– and religion was, as far as I could understand, a bit of a nonfactor in Soul Eater. Faith might be persistent, but having a literal actual god to have weigh in on things tended to cut down on religious extremism somewhat. Nobody needed an excuse to pass around gifts and food, however, even if the gifts themselves were more casual than meaningful or extravagant.
Maka got a set of colored sticky notes, highlighters, and file organizers from Tsubaki; Blackstar, with his typical verve, had scribbled his signature on every single sticky note and the front of ever clear plastic divider, although he had at least restrained himself to the upper right corner on the sticky notes. She also received a book on non-violent anger management from Soul, which –understanding the point he was trying to make– she promptly used to Maka Chop his face into the coffee table. Kid, whom I was fairly sure was still a more casual friend of hers, gave her what I understood to be some rarer historical volumes on phasmology, and Liz and Patty gave her some new green ties and hair-ties for her pigtails, respectively.
Since it was kind of hard to think of something to give her that she didn't have already and didn't expose my overt knowledge of Soul Eater, I'd bought Maka one of the infamous commemorative mugs, which read Frohe Weihnachten aus Düsseldorf in cheery red font, and filled it with chocolate and cinnamon sticks. Rex had gotten her a fluffy white wool scarf, which we'd used to cushion my gift en route to Death City.
Soul, once he recovered from being piledrived –piledriven?– into the coffee table, received a much-less-pointed gift of soundproofed headphones from Maka, which even had his little cartoon emblem –coincidentally the series' logo– airbrushed on the sides in bright orange. Blackstar, in a splurge that surprised me a little, had gotten him a thick leather jacket suitable for motorcycle rides, and Tsubaki had chipped in with a matching helmet.
Liz –in a rather amusingly petty move, which was well the equal of Soul's gift to Maka– had bought Soul a roll of linen bandages and book studying Lord Death's documented fights throughout history –in other words, a list of all the many, many ways that challenging a Grim Reaper could have gone badly for him. Patty, much less pointed, had gotten him a polar bear plushie, which I assumed was her literal translation for Soul's expressed desire for "coolness".
Kid, in a gesture that I assumed meant something along the lines of hey, no hard feelings for having wiped the floor with you and Blackstar the first day we met, gave him a hanging scroll –bilaterally symmetric, of course– of what I was informed was album art of one of Soul's favorite bands.
Since I'd been unable to think up anything more inventive, I gave Soul a carved wood and enamel music box, which he regarded dubiously. I couldn't remember how known Soul's affinity for music was at this point –he was a skilled piano player, sure, but due to an inferiority complex regarding his violin-playing virtuoso brother, Soul refused to play for any of his friends (except Maka, once) until well into the midpoint of the series.
Rex gave him a wooden ornament that he'd paid extra to have Soul's emblem burned into, explaining that he meant it for a dangling charm on the motorbike. This was much better received, which led me to guess that the whole being-a-musician thing was still a sore and secret topic.
When it came Blackstar's turn, of course, he immediately started ripping into his presents with such velocity and excitement that it created a glittery, papery windstorm; this visual clutter was not improved when Blair abruptly transformed into her sleek purple-black cat form in a cloud of smoke and then leaped for the nearest fluttering bits of paper with an excited yowl, claws swinging.
The presents that remained in the shredded nest after a sulking Blair was retrieved included a cast-metal water bottle from Maka, three new sleeveless exercise shirts from Soul, what Tsubaki assured us all was an extremely high-resolution personal camera, some exercise lotion from Liz, a mirror from Patty, and a map of Death City from Kid, with all the most arduous walking/hiking routes highlighted in blue.
I was rather proud of the visual pun involved when Blackstar fished out my present, which was a huge blue paper star with intricately detailed patterns cut into it.
"You put a lightbulb or a candle inside and then light it up, and it looks awesome," I explained when several people side-eyed me for giving Blackstar something that fragile. "It's like a paper lantern."
"They lit up the ones they had on display at the street market; they looked amazing," Rex added. His present to Blackstar was more modest; painted tin stars strung on a chain, which could theoretically be used as a garland but probably, knowing Blackstar, was going to be used as rope to display something.
Tsubaki was much neater than her partner in dissembling her presents –almost painfully so. She did rip the paper, but was so slow and careful with it that any tears were almost incidental to her painstakingly removing the wrappings and folding them up into neat squares or rectangles.
"I fold origami sometimes," she explained, setting another red-and-green-striped packet aside. "This paper is good for that."
As it turned out, Maka was previously aware of Tsubaki's origami hobby, as her present was a box of glitzy types of squared-off paper and a few spools of high-tensile clear beading wire and librarian-grade tape. Soul chipped in with a racked box of various cooking spices, which made me blink a little until I noticed a lot of the pots and vials seemed custom and remembered the whole estranged from family thing. Was he recycling his own crappy presents, or gifting away some of the useless stuff they'd sent him packing with?
It seemed to be meant kindly enough, and Tsubaki certainly received it gratefully. I decided not to pry.
I was morbidly interested in what Blackstar got her, which turned out to be a messily handcrafted book of inspiring phrases –all written by him, of course– with a star pulped onto the cover. He proudly explained how he'd pounded out the paper and cut it into pages and sewed them together himself, because "obviously I wouldn't be such a small man as to upstage your hobbies and stuff, but I can do 'em just fine too, see?" and informed her in an equally-obvious tone that since she was the best damn partner ever, she was the only person in the world who yet deserved a book of his encouraging wisdom.
Considering Blackstar tended to regard unfocused academia –studying for class was another matter– with the same disdain a pampered white Persian regarded raw sewage with, this handmade book of written phrases was even more disgustingly sweet than Tsubaki's ideal breakup scenario. It was always the loudmouth jocks you had to watch out for in anime –they were dumber than a bag of hammers, but they could be downright diabetic when it came to showing affection.
The follow-up after Tsubaki had carefully tucked the book away had been a bit less overwhelming: Liz had gotten her a luxury bath kit, Patty had gotten her a pair of pink fluffy bunny slippers –reasoning unclear– and Kid had apparently splurged a bit and bought her several carefully-sealed bricks of The Good Tea™, direct from Japan.
After somewhat shamefaced blank consideration in the Christmas market –Blackstar was so much that Tsubaki tended to fade into the background for me, even if I did largely understand her personality and history– I'd gotten her a Litchäuser –a setpiece of the painted porcelain Christmas villages that people would put on tables or mantelpieces. I'd done my best to find one that looked at least vaguely East Asian, but the time and place meant that the little porcelain shack ended up looking more Bavarian than anything, with a cabin painted to look like wood underneath a powdery coating of porcelain snow and several cheerful red-cheeked figures standing in the pseudo-snow outside.
Tsubaki seemed to like it, all the same, and gave me an appreciative nod with a sparkle in her eye.
Since the time lapse between acquisition and gifting was so short, Rex had risked getting her one of the huge gingerbread hearts they were selling at the market, which was trimmed with lacy bits of red frosting and read Frohe Weihnachten aus Düsseldorf once again in cheerful white icing. Everyone expressed their envious approval, and I noted that Tsubaki's generosity in sharing it only extended to breaking off a small, palm-sized fragment and breaking it into smaller pieces to pass around for a single taste.
Kid was even slower in opening his presents than Tsubaki: when five minutes had passed and he had only teased open three-fourths of the first box, being excruciatingly careful not to let the tape rip the fragile paper, Maka had meaningfully met our eyes and inclined her head towards the open kitchenette.
Careful not to spill any drinks or upset any paper plates, we got up as one and moved over there, tactfully not paying attention to Kid's efforts as we went for refills and seconds. Compliments were passed around on the cooking –mostly courtesy of Maka and Tsubaki– as Blackstar and Patty cheerfully stuffed their faces and the rest of us sipped or nibbled with more decorum.
"Since Kid's gonna take forever with that," Soul said after a bit, nodding in the direction of the living room, "you guys wanna see what I got the two of you?"
Rex and I blinked we attention turned in our direction.
"Sorry, something for both of us?" I said, blanking on what on earth it could possibly be. Soul was a guy who chilled his way through life –getting us something to help our advance through EAT was out of character for him, if it were even possible to begin with.
"Yup," he said, and didn't elaborate as he set his stuff aside and moseyed in the direction of the door. On fire with curiosity, Rex and I followed, with the others trailing behind amongst a cloud of expectation. I caught Blackstar grinning, which was somewhat ominous.
Soul's present turned out to be on the street, beneath a canvas tarp with a somewhat incongruous big red bow on top. He grabbed a corner of the tarp, pulled, and-
"Holy shit, you got us a motorbike," I said as the tarp rustled to the ground.
"Oh no," Rex groaned.
"Holy shit, you got us a motorbike," I repeated, staring at the sleek gleaming thing with my mouth open as I calculated dollar signs and how many of them must have gone into this purchase. DWMA students probably got a discount or something, but still!
"Yup," Soul drawled again, stuffing both hands in his pockets. "I know you guys aren't looking for anything that'll break land speed records, so I got ya something small and sturdy. Good bike to start driving on, too."
"You guys gotta put those lessons to use somehow," Blackstar said, nudging me in the side with his elbow and conspiring to look encouraging as he grinned like a maniac.
"Holy shit," I said for the third time, still staring at it.
"Anyway, getting this was a bit on the pricey side, so between that and the helmet, this is all you guys are getting out of me this year," Soul said, shrugging his shoulders and lightly kicking the bike's exhaust.
I opened my mouth blankly.
"Holy-"
Rex grabbed me by the arm and tugged me back into the shelter of apartment building's entrance hall.
"Arya, snap out of it!" he hissed, shaking me by both shoulders as the front door closed behind us. "What's wrong with you?"
"Rex, he gave us a matte black motorcycle with skeletal decal work," I said, still struggling to claw my way out of the greedy resonance of a thousand goth metalheads beaming into my brain. "Do you know how many edgy teenagers would literally crawl and beg and die for the chance to own that?"
His unimpressed look said everything it needed to.
"Don't judge me. I was young once too, you know."
"Arya, you're a W-" He cut himself off hastily. "Your young once was hundreds of years ago!"
"The fucking hell it was not," I said, offended. "Er, well, probably? I don't know how this- look, if you're allowed to geek out about opera, I'm allowed to geek out for a few seconds about owning a cool-looking motorbike, okay? S'no crime."
He rolled his eyes, but allowed me to drag him back out into the desert night, where everyone (minus Kid) was looking at us expectantly.
"It's awesome," I said. "Thanks, Soul."
He looked smug.
"Is Kid going to be done anytime soon, or do you think they can go for a test drive?" Maka said after a moment, glancing expectantly at Liz and Patty.
"It'll take him a while yet, probably," Liz sighed, folding her arms across her chest and shaking her head slowly. "I say let her go."
"Cool," Soul said, and extended the matching black helmet towards us. "Rex, you wanna ride behind or in front?"
"…Can't I just stay here?"
"She's gotta get used to riding with you eventually, man. Back or front?"
***Time Skip***
The three of us ended up sandwiched together on the bike, with Soul behind me and Rex behind him. Soul directed us through the complex tangle of streets as we drew lower and lower on the mountain slope of the city, until eventually we passed through a gate and had a wide-open plain before us.
"You can open it up a bit here," Soul said, his voice distorted slightly through the two sets of helmets. "See how well you can control it going fast."
I revved the throttle and we roared out into the desert, scattering a cloud of dust and sand behind us. Soul occasionally nudged me to course-correct, but overall, I managed to hold the bike pretty steady as we zoomed along the open, empty road. I followed Soul's directions as we eventually curved around and headed back towards the city, glowing and twinkling in the distance.
So far as my limited automobile experience went, the bike ran pretty smoothly (if one accounted for my subpar driving skills). The engine didn't cough or rattle, the seat was comfortable, and after Soul made us stop and switch positions halfway back to the city so that he was in back and Rex was in the middle, Rex didn't clutch me like he was expecting to fall off at any second.
All in all, it was a wonderful gift, and I told Soul as much by the time we got back to their apartment. He waved off anything that threatened to be too sappy, and we tromped back up to join the others, who had since regathered back in the living room after Kid finished painstakingly unwrapping his gifts. He had apparently been waiting for us to arrive before actually opening them, and we quickly retrieved our food and sat down.
Maka had apparently giving him a ridiculously intricate set of compasses, rulers, and measuring tools that honestly looked like a set of arcane algebra –no, calculus– implements, but Kid seemed delighted, in his own quiet way. Behind his shoulders, Liz and Patty looked horrorstruck –momentarily, in Patty's case, but Liz's lingering expression of frustrated despair more than made up for it. Soul had gotten him a more practical jewelry container divided into eight compartments –presumably for his skull rings or cuff links. I wasn't sure if Kid had more jewelry than that.
Blackstar had gone above and beyond –or at least, beyond and some kind of strange direction– and gotten Kid a dozen stress balls in various colors, all with Blackstar's signature messily painted on them in dripping sharpie. Tsubaki, ever the considerate one, had gotten him some scented candles.
I was pleased by that, since I had bought Kid a glass candle holder –after carefully scouring the stand for a symmetrical design, of course– painted with swirling black designs that were nearly, but not quite, calligraphy. Rex, after some advisement from me on the exact nature of Kid's OCD, had bought a pair of adorable ceramic dogs, which were probably originally meant to be a salt and pepper set. There was much comment on them, and Kid even had to protectively cup and nudge one away from Patty's curious grasp.
Speaking of which –Patty tore into her presents with just as much gusto and glee as Blackstar, although in this case Maka had already preemptively clamped both hands around a sulking kitty-Blair beneath her front legs, letting the rest of her body dangle and sway in midair.
I would admit to some curiosity about what everyone got Patty; her bubbly and childish exterior did not extend all the way –or even most of the way– into the depths of her personality, and I wondered how many of the others knew that at this point. She and Liz had both grown up in a dog-eat-dog world, and living the way they had meant that beneath their current, more relaxed personalities was a core that was tough as nails.
Liz had been an ice-cold planner, someone who calculated in an instant whether or was more profitable to kill or rob their current victim, and how to best break their spirit quickly so that they'd offer little resistance when being mugged. Patty had just been somewhat… rabid.
Which, I supposed, was a fair enough survival mechanism to cultivate. Messing with a lone pretty girl on the streets of Brooklyn was an unpleasantly forgone conclusion; messing with a Weapon might be an entirely different matter, but messing with a Weapon who exuded a constant subtext of manic violence balanced beneath the cheerful overtones of a giddy airhead was something even the worst of thugs would at least hesitate at.
It wasn't like Patty's ebullience was entirely fake, though; Liz looked out for her sister, and she was exactly as happy as she looked and sounded most of the time.
Most of the time.
Maka seemed content to tap into Patty's more upbeat side, gifting her a study binder and a full rainbow rack of glitter gel pens with rubber grips. Soul –perhaps remembering how she'd colored her test sheets in crayon and then folded them into an origami giraffe during the Super Written Exam– had bought her a large giraffe stuffed animal, which Patty immediately claimed as an impromptu beanbag seat.
In an act of concentrated terrorism that made everyone else in the room go pale, Blackstar had managed to acquire several large, sealed tubs of industrial glitter. Patty kept on laser eye on them at all times, even when she accepted Tsubaki's gift of a professional art kit, complete with stretched canvas boards for painting.
I was even more curious to see what Liz and Kid got her, as Liz was her sister and Kid was their partner, who could presumably be relied upon to know her best.
Kid, as it turned out, had not gotten Patty anything –he'd made her a monochrome quilt with black and white octagons and a gingham white border. It was a rather touching gift; Kid was neurotic enough that he'd unpick and resew the quilt a dozen times for a single skewed millimeter, which would massively extend his craft time. Patty certainly knew that, and she also knew that he knew that she'd had little opportunities for luxurious soft furnishings like a nice thick blanket while growing up.
Liz, who knew her sister as well or better as Kid did, had gotten her a pair of spiffy little brass knuckles –ones that were thoroughly bedazzled with a glittering menagerie of rhinestones to boot. Anyone Patty punched with those was going to be seeing stars in more ways than one, to say nothing of the track marks all those little gemstones would make.
Patty seemed absolutely delighted with them, to her sister's unsubtle smug pride as she oohed and ached and slipped them over her fingers to wave her hands around.
Rex, not knowing her very much at this point, had gone for the safe option and indulged her childish side, having picked through a number of jewelry vendors at the Christkindlmarkt to find the prettiest or cutest hair clips he could. Patty seemed to like them, which, considering that we'd met all of maybe three times prior to tonight, was more than enough of a win for me.
I hadn't been sure of where to strike the fine balance between too patronizing and too practical, so I'd gone safe for my present and gotten Patty and her sister matching sheepskin jackets. Fashionable, warm, fluffy, and completely non-objectionable. I explained the matching bit as Patty unwrapped my gift, which kindled an avaricious light in Liz's eyes as she immediately scanned her own presents for a similar bag and tore it open.
This was a signal to segue into Liz opening her presents, which she did with fastidious excitement. While Patty indulged her childish side now that she was in an environment that allowed her to spread out and relax a bit, Liz skewed a bit in the opposite direction and made a point of enjoying all the finer things that life could bring. No longer for her the cheap bargain bin or the gas station cosmetics; she bought the designer, the luxury, the brand names, and now that she could afford the time it took for self-maintenance, she took it with a vengeance.
Her presents reflected that: expensive shampoo and conditioner set from Maka, some fancy earrings from Soul, yoga magazines from Blackstar, a huge box set of makeup products from Tsubaki, and an array of festive holiday nail polish from Rex. Kid's present was an issue of one of the more expensive fashion catalogues and a promise to order whatever eight things she wanted from it, no questions asked. Patty's present had arrows carefully indicating which way was up, and I tilted my head in bafflement as Liz peeled off the paper and-
SPROING!
"Gyaaaah!"
Liz wasn't the only one to shriek as one of the ugliest –and most terrifying– dolls I had ever seen was spring-launched out of the box directly at her face, all grizzled black hair and blood-dripping eye sockets. A throwing knife slammed into its round skull a moment later as Liz nearly climbed the couch to get away from it, the puppet's momentum ending a heartbeat later as it bobbed merrily at the end of its spring.
Her sister cackled.
"That's not funny, Patty!" Liz half-whimpered, half-snarled as Tsubaki reached over to sheepishly pluck her kunai out of the doll's head, with Soul clutching his heart and wheezing.
"Are you kidding? It's the best present!" Patty said, wrapping an arm around her sister's neck and gesturing at the mutilated puppet. "I'm helping you overcome your fears, sis! Just put this lil' guy on a self in your room someplace so he can stare into your soul every night, slowly drinking up all your nightmares and horrors until he knows every single last of them better than you do, and then-"
"Perhaps that's not the best description of what you want the doll to do," Kid said to Patty as Liz turned grey, her fingers digging deep into his arm.
"Whaaaat? C'mon, it's great. Tell him, sis!"
"It's g-g-g-great, P-Patty," Liz said automatically, her teeth clattering like wind chimes in a hurricane.
It was an odd quirk of Liz's character that, while she was fully comfortable with all the murder and mugging and mayhem that she and Patty had grew up with –and the violence inherent in currently being an EAT student– the merest hint of anything ghostly or horror-related had her all but sobbing with fear. But she was also willing to bend over backwards for her sister, so… the doll probably was going to be accepted, and quite possibly even placed in her room.
Kid, who undoubtedly knew this as well as I did, sighed lightly and shook his head.
"Twenty bucks says that that's gonna mysteriously vanish as soon as they bring it home," Blackstar said to Soul behind one hand as Kid leaned forward and began gingerly pushing the doll back into the box. Liz gurgled.
"D-don't say it like that…"
"Twenty-five says Kid'll be the one to dump it in a fire for fucking with his symmetry," Soul replied to Blackstar, reaching sideways to clasp hands with him without taking his eyes away from Liz.
Maka rolled her eyes, then sat up straight and clapped her hands sharply.
"Since it'd be rude to make fun of someone else's present, let's move on," she said, the pointed edge in her voice distinctly aimed towards her partner and his best friend. "Arya? Rex?"
I blinked.
"Oh, uh, yeah. Right," I said, belatedly leaning over my own gifts. Maka's was the biggest, and when I opened it, was revealed to be a giant box set of encyclopedias. This would have been a strong contender for the most boring gift in existence if not for the fact that I was technically a foreigner to just about everything described in those books, which was enough to bump it up to just kinda lame.
Blackstar's gift was nearly as bulky and exponentially heavier; which, when I opened it, made sense, since he'd given me a fairly decent set of hand barbells. I decided not to think about how I was going to get those and the motorcycle home at the same time.
Tsubaki and Kid had both given me books –Tsubaki a martial arts guide of sword techniques, and Kid a historical treatise on famous sword Meisters.
Liz had gotten me a trendy little jacket –"Since you're always wearing one,"– and Patty had made her own contribution with a flowing sundress that I was nonetheless never going to wear within this world, for fear of a wind blowing up the skirt.
I side-eyed Rex before I opened his present, wondering if I dared to hope it would be my journal.
It wasn't, which was not too terribly much of a surprise. Our bond was a lot stronger than it had been, and he did trust me to a certain extent, but… that was kind of the final frontier as far as him trusting me went. Theoretically, I could just be playing the long game to lure him into a false sense of security, and would rip his head off the moment I got my journal back.
I wouldn't, obviously. But he didn't 100% believe that quite yet, and he wouldn't give my journal back until he did.
It was fine. I could wait.
And in the meantime, I could wait with what was apparently a compendium of theories on how Witches, Enchanters, and other magic-wielders used wards and barriers to protect themselves. My eyebrow rose as I glanced up from it to meet Rex's eyes, since this was almost certainly meant to go beyond theory. Unbeknownst to the others –who saw only a hobbyist interest in our enemies– I was a Witch who could actually try and practice some or most of these techniques.
Huh. That was… something?
I decided not to think on what that implied about the connections Rex had made about me wanting to feel safe, and instead forced myself to be grateful.
This was nice. He was trying to help. I should not spazz out because Rex thinking I was worried about maintaining my safety/security implied that he'd read a lot more out of my half-panicked rant after the Hannibal case than I'd ever want anyone to read in regards to my mental state. This was fiiiiine.
"What'd you get?" I asked him, doing the smart thing as I sat on my mental knee-jerk reaction and then slid it smoothly to one side.
Mostly practical things, as it turned out. Maka had given him a damn near bulletproof glasses case that could be fixed onto his belt, Blackstar gave him track shoes, and Tsubaki gave him –I snort-snickered at this one– a maneki-neko. Well, I supposed even with my influence dragging him into EAT and through a slew of a dozen Kishin Egg souls, Rex's supposedly cursed luck was common knowledge in the DWMA gossip pool.
Kid's gift was given in a similar vein, though I may have missed some of the cultural subtext; a black tie with Lord Death's mask-logo woven into it just below where the knot would go. As symbolic gestures went, it was fairly implicit; this emblem of the Grim Reaper's house, so to speak, given explicitly from the son of Death, was a tacit acknowledgment that whatever the other students might think, Kid believed Rex was right where he belonged.
We pretended not to notice when Rex sniffled a little as he replaced it in the tissue wrapping, although I leaned my shoulder supportively against his for a few seconds.
Liz had managed to hear through the grapevine of Rex's operatic hobbies, since she'd gotten him tickets to Madama Butterfly –I questioned the spelling, but whatever; I wasn't the opera nerd– in the Death Opera House. Because of course, Death City had an opera house. Patty had gotten him a folio of new earrings, presumably to wear to the event.
Given his present to me, I felt a little guilty over my first present to him, which was something of a joke gift –a manual for self-defense against Witches. I studiously avoided his gaze when he opened it, laughing nervously when I felt his eyes boring into the side of my face.
My second gift was less teasing; namely, a ten-by-ten graph paper with the bottom right square filled in with purple marker.
"It's for tracking how many souls we've gotten," I said, leaning in to bump shoulders again as I pointed to the heading of Death Scythe Progress Chart written above the grid. "You can pin it up in your room and, y'know, see the columns start filling up. I just thought maybe you'd like of a tangible reminder of how far we've come."
"Thanks, Arya," he said, and smiled.
Mission successful.
Now, how the actual hell are we going to get all this shit home in less than three trips…?
11.53 AM, USA Central Time
German Translations:
Ich kann mich nicht fangen, Heißluftgebläse: Can't catch me, Heißluftgebläse [lit. hot air gun; a chatterer]
Halt der Mund, Arsegiege: Can it/shut your mouth, Arsegeige [lit. ass violin; someone who is bad at a task]
Frohe Weihnachten aus Düsseldorf: Merry Christmas from Düsseldorf
12-Peter Kürten:
Changing things up to a real-life serial killer, this cartoonishly fucked-up individual was born in 1883 in Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany. He was the third child in a family of thirteen and with a history of mental illness on his father's side, and frequently ran away from home and committed numerous petty crimes, including arson, theft, and breaking and entering, and was in prison for twenty-seven of his forty-seven years of life. While still at his family home, he fell in with the local dog-catcher, who taught him to mutilate animals for fun… which Kürten did. A lot. He even committed bestiality from the ages of about 13 to 16, saying that his greatest pleasure was stabbing a sheep while simultaneously having intercourse with it.
According to Kürten, his first murders were when he was nine, and he pushed two other boys off a raft when they all went swimming, and managed to trap those boys under the raft, where they drowned. In 1913, he broke into a house and strangled thirteen-year-old Christine Klein while she was sleeping, before slashing her throat four times and penetrating her vagina with his fingers. He broke into several more houses to strangle more victims, all of whom survived, and attacked both a man and a woman with an ax, reaching orgasm at the sight of their blood: however, this is still not the murder spree he was known for.
In 1925, Kürten returned to Düsseldorf, the city where all his primary crimes would be committed. Carefully spacing his crimes out over a span of four years, Kürten was responsible for three cases of attempted strangulation on women and seventeen cases of arson between 1925 and 1928. In 1929 he committed six more acts of arson, and stabbed an older woman 24 times with a sharpened pair of scissors, which she managed to survive. He also stabbed a drunk man 20 times with those same scissors ten days later, and a young girl named Rosa Ohliger in March, stabbing her thirteen times in the stomach, temple, genitals, and heart and achieving ejaculation at the sight of her death. He then dragged her body to a hedge and set her on fire, also achieving orgasm at this. He attempted to lasso and strangle several more women that July within the space of 24 hours, but they both escaped. In August, two women and one man were stabbed from behind, all of them surviving but seriously injured. Two foster sisters were found three days later, one five and one fourteen, with Kürten confessing later he had sent the older sister to get cigarettes for him before strangling the younger, and strangling and stabbing the sister in the same spot when she returned, even going so far as to suck blood from her wounds. The following day, he attempted to pick up a housemaid, and upon failing, stabbed her multiple times, so hard that the point of the knife broke off and lodged in her back. Luckily, she survived.
Nearly a month after this, Kürten struck again, changing his pattern and using a hammer to batter his victims to death, stating that he wanted to see if he would get more enjoyment out of it. Kürten continued with this for a few months, with some victims dying and others surviving, before sending a letter to the police telling them where they could find an as-yet undiscovered body, which they did. Eventually, one of his surviving victims managed to lead police back to his home, and rather ironically, he confessed to his wife that same evening and was taken in the next day.
Kürten's main motive for killing seemed to be sexual pleasure, which explains why many of his victims were allowed to survive even when he saw them stagger away. He also was a sensation-seeker and reportedly had fantasies of being one to catch the Düsseldorf murderer (which was himself) and being showered with rewards because of it.