We didn't start this, the monster Lord Death made did.
Kid poured over old archives, the magic tools, anything that could be the potential cause for such a cryptic message. His father's legacy was littered with skeletons and monsters and other such unpleasant things. It seemed anytime they addressed one, another would come bursting through.
"When did you sleep last?" Chrona asked from the doorway of his office. They'd sent Excalibur on a fool's errand in hopes of getting some form of peace for the time being. Kid briefly glanced at the clock.
"What day is it?" Kid asked. Too many times it had been around five when he looked up, but it was all blurring together.
"That's what I thought." Chrona sighed and took one of the papers from his hands. "Eight hours. No one will blame you for resting for eight hours."
"You don't know that." Kid said. "It could be some other great evil my father stuffed in a closet somewhere. Or another experiment of his gone wrong. If more people get hurt because of this-"
"You're spiraling." Chrona put their hands on the sides of his face to pull his attention away from his desk. "I can keep looking, but you need to step away from this for a bit."
"Just for a while." Kid said, more as a warning for when he'd be back.
"And water." Chrona placed a chast kiss on Kid's forehead before letting him leave. For a moment there was peace. Then Excalibur leapt from the doorway onto Kid's desk. All the meticulously organized stacks of paper were sent flying. The reviewed and unreviewed information mixed on the floor. Chrona took a deep breath in, knowing they now had to merely replicate the state Kid's office had been in before he got back.
"When dragons ruled the skies, I rode among them and tasted the stars!" Excalibur said with a tap of his cane. "They made the finest jerky, but people get squeamish at the thought of eating something like them. To slay is to be righteous, to murder is to be cowardice. A monster by any other name is a rose."
Eight hours. They could fix this mess in eight hours.
All the lights in the house were out save for one end table lamp. Black Star had the Royaume pamphlet open on the kotatsu table. The bright colors and bubble letters almost mocking him, even though he was the one being stubborn.
Tsubaki was the one that let it slip there were schools full of magical girls in another realm. All the shows and books that were made to persuade children to join the DWMA ended up working against him. Even Kim had suggested looking into it.
He had a perfectly good reason for digging in his heals. Shinigami-sama had made it perfectly clear, there was a chance the destructive sway of magic might get Angela put back on the list. He trusted Kid and Chrona wouldn't do something so rash without intervening first, but the sneaking around, and lying about how classes were going; it wasn't encouraging. There was a good chance if she went, she wouldn't come back.
Now people were targeting her again.
He could pull out of the mission, risk the pay cut, move and see if that would be enough to shake the enemy off their trail. Or he could finally take everyone's advice and let her go. He saw the coats on the rack sway out of the corner of his eye.
"What are you doing up?" He asked, though he wasn't upset. She dropped her camouflage and he nodded towards the other end of the table.
"I..." She slipped out of the shadows. The pamphlet caught her eye and her heart skipped a beat. "Can I go?"
"I told you I'd think about it." Black Star said. She quickly sat down, a little more giddy than before. He had made up his mind, it was just coming to terms with what that would entail. "I didn't want to say anything in front of Maka, but if the magical world was really that much better than here, I think you would have been there already." He'd heard from Kid how eagerly the witches would sentence people to death over even minor transgressions. Bringing in an outsider sounded like one of those supposed crimes. "I'm sure things are different now, but I worry."
"I've paid attention in combat class, I can take care of myself." She puffed out her chest with pride. "I'm the strongest witch in my class. If I'm able to use magic freely, I'll be unstoppable."
"I'm sure you will be." That really, truly was the problem. He had no doubt a surge of power would go to her head. "If I knew shit about magic..."
"It's fine." Angela squirmed in her seat. Was this actually happening?
"It's not like I'm shoving you out the door." Black Star said. "As soon as the mission is finished, I'll let you know. One semester should be fine."
"THANK YOU!" She shoved herself across the table to hug him. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!"
"There wasn't anything else you wanted to tell me?"
"No?" She rolled off the table and sprinted to her room to pack. A ear-splitting shriek of joy rattled through the house once the door closed behind her. The other thing he'd been looking at was a list of potential spells Angela had been tapping into when she wasn't supposed to be that Kim had given him. He leaned forward with his head in his hands. Why couldn't she just play with swords like a normal kid?
Angela stood on the steps of Shibusen while Arisa prepared a portal. The younger witches had been dragged out to say goodbye, though they clearly didn't understand why so many people were anxious about her going.
"You're going to text me when you get there." Black Star said. "If anything goes wrong, I mean anything-"
"I'll be fine." Angela gripped the handle of her bag. "Like you said, it's just for a little bit. I'll be back for the summer when everything's over and done with." Part of her had hoped Tsubaki would have come to see her off, but she understood work made things difficult. The text she had received was a small comfort as she waved goodbye to the DWMA.
The swirling vortex closed and Black Star was left with a sick feeling in his stomach. This was for the best, even if it broke the oath he'd made to Mifune. When he found who was responsible for this, he was going to kill them.
Maka had no objections with an aggressive training regimen. Even if Black Star didn't blame her for their failure on the roof top, she did. Failing to capture a target was never acceptable. Even when she botched her first witch hunting mission, it was because they were after the wrong target, not because they let Blair get away.
She was used to training with a weapon in her hand, and trying to explain to Black Star the differences between fighting with a pole arm versus a sword had lead no where. They needed to at least somewhat predict each other's movements. Which was nearly impossible with how impulsive Black Star was.
"Wrong again." Maka used the wooden pole in her hands to redirect his strike. "You're still getting too close." The pole twirled effortlessly in her hand. "The whole point it to keep the enemy from touching you." She held it behind her. When Black Star got in too close again, she grabbed the tool he was practicing with and yanked him towards her. "Otherwise that happens." She let go and he stumbled away, his face flushed.
"I know how to fight Maka." There was no doubt he could over power her in hand to hand combat. The more direct his strikes, the easier it was to direct his momentum elsewhere. It was clear why other weapons had difficulty working with him. Tsubaki was a flexible fighter, able to accommodate to whatever the situation demanded. But to master one style of weapon required knowing the weapon's optimal uses and accommodating to it.
"You know how to hit thing with another thing." Maka teased. "You're not parrying, or juggling, or paying attention!" He had caught her running off with the mouth and tried to strike over head. She blocked, the force of it rattled her bones and cracked the earth beneath her feet just a hair.
"It would be easier to pay attention if we weren't fighting with sticks like kids." He said. She wrinkled her nose with a tight pursed frown, he was holding it like a sword again.
"How am I supposed to maneuver around you if I don't know what moves you're going to use." Maka said, she might as well be speaking Greek. "We can't coordinate move sets if there's nothing to match the hand signals to." He was a meister too, he should know these things already. The more she tried to explain the more confused he looked. She adjust her hold on the stick to demonstrate. "You know, the hand signals?"
"How about you just trust I know how to fight and let me get used to handling you." He said. "I'm not gonna get the hang of it if I'm practicing with something else."
"What if you need me to do something in combat?"
"...I'll tell you." Black Star said and used the practice stick to close her lower jaw. Shouting maneuver changes out loud, no planned move sets, how was any weapon supposed to keep up? "I assure you once they've figured it out, I've already hit them with 'a thing'." She shook her head, this was absolutely crazy. "Why'd you want to partner with me if you wanted to call all the shots?" She readied her excuses, the same ones she'd told Kid and Soul when they questioned her decisions. "What, are you into me or something?"
It was a joke. She'd been taking their first practice way too seriously and they were getting nowhere. Usually she'd call him a jerk and use that paper cut to her pride to fuel her fighting spirit. Instead she looked away, her quick wit kneecapped a hair too long.
"Oh my god." This wasn't the reaction he'd anticipated, laughing in spite of himself. "You totally are." He doubled down. Silently he begged for her to laugh too, or throw something else at him. Otherwise, he'd get his stupid hopes up over an offhand comment, which was so not worth the heartache.
"N-no." She cursed under her breath. "You're such a jerk. I'm just trying to help you."
"Right," Black Star rolled his eyes, "which is why you're putting off transforming until the last possible moment." He blocked her instinctive, overhead strike. There she was.
"If you want to embarrass yourself, then fine." She huffed. "I've only trained three other scythes; what would I know?" She transformed and he caught her with ease. She was lighter this time.
"See, was that so hard?" He adjusted his hold to counter balance the weight of the blade. This was exactly why he could learn jack with just a staff. He didn't need to do any fancy twirls to build up momentum for a proper strike. He could easily slice through a dummy with a single strike.
"I swear to god if you don't widen your stance, I'm going to have an aneurysm." Maka groaned.
Since Asura's death, the magical world was a far brighter and cheery place. The sun here was a gorgeous embroidered thing with wavy points. The cobble stone paths were rounded with flecks of glitter embedded into every stone. Royaume was like a white princess castle and the uniforms had rich purples and blues in it. Angela was so happy to be here, she could shout from the roof tops.
"Get down from there!" An older woman wrapped in a quilted shawl shouted at her from the courtyard. Angela lowered her scarf and plopped back down to the grounds below. "I don't know what those dogs teach over there, but that is no way for a young witch to act." Every witch she'd ever met was just as flashy and theatrical, but the girls at the academy just giggled as one of the teachers gave her an earful.
"How else am I supposed to find a partner?" Angela asked. Ms Bruixa adjusted her glasses with a stern glare.
"Your 'partner' is your familiar." She said. Angela's shoulders slumped. Their apartment had a strict no pets policy. The few Chameleons she had interacted with hadn't lived that long either.
"I don't have one of those." Angela said. The other students had moved on, whispering amongst themselves as they passed.
"Well then," Ms Bruixa sighed, "I suggest you get to class. You have a lot of learning to do." Angela left with a bitter feeling in her heart. If all witch teachers were like that, it's no wonder so many of them turned to evil.
Traveling for missions was a pain. Shakashita was a strange water-locked town that was only reachable by ferry. During the Kishen's reign, the inhabitants had torn the entire town down brick by brick and rebuilt the buildings to curve and spiral. From overhead, the streets formed the three eyed symbol of the Kishen. On foot the winding paths were tricky to navigate, but they finally found which dead end road Meme had asked them to meet at.
"Thank you for coming." Tsugumi greeted both of them. Meme seemed surprised to see them, her ribbon on the left side of head today. Tsugumi glanced over her shoulder and waved for her partner to go ahead into her family home. "I thought Shalua was the reason Meme's memory's, well, not the greatest." She grabbed Maka by the shoulders. "But everyone here is like this. They called us here to deal with a Kishen Egg that's already been executed."
"I thought you came here to talk to Meme's teacher." Maka said. Tsugumi thought for a moment, her eyes widening.
"Oh my gosh, it's contagious." Tsugumi wailed.
"Where's the dojo?" Black Star asked.
"Right." Tsugumi urged them to follow her inside. "There's so much wierd stuff, here I almost missed it." The bamboo interior was black, almost like curtains of hair lined the walls. In the kitchen, Meme was having tea with an elderly woman.
"Oh look dearie, your friends came to visit you." The woman said. "I'll make some more tea." Meme took them out to the garden. A path of rocks had been arranged in a spiral with a small totem in the center.
"Meme, where's the dojo?" Tsugumi asked. Meme placed a yen piece in either eye socket and waited. Nothing happened. Tsugumi was too afraid to pick the statue up. "Akane-kun had one just like it in his dorm." A small black lion statue with empty eyes. It's mouth was opened to hold something, but the piece seemed to long be missing.
"...This isn't the dojo." Black Star said.
"Usually that works." Meme said. "Tsugumi, I think something's wrong with my teacher."
"Yeah, that's why we came here." Tsugumi sighed. Maka grabbed Black Star's hand.
"Four O'Clock, on the roof." She said before transforming. Black Star nodded and dashed in the direction. Meme and Tsugumi followed close behind. A flash of scarlet rounded the bend.
The dojo was the only normal building in town. They chased the target walls were stained with russet splatters.
"Sensei!" Meme ran ahead to the training dummies. The body was long gone, but she kept searching. Black Star scanned the room, much to Maka's frustration, because she could see him plain as day.
"Maka, relax." Black Star said. This is why they needed some kind of code!
"Can we please just do this my way." Maka shot back. He rolled the eyes, but none-the-less relented. Her urgency made it easy to resonate with him. Soul perception was second nature to her now, she just needed him to see the little shit hiding in the shadows. Black Star winced, bombarded with hundred of lights, like an emergency flare going off. It was distracting as hell, but he got the point. Something was following them on the cieling. "Wait, that's not him, that's-" An emaciated woman with needles for teeth was crawling above them like a spider. Her ghostly white skin was soaked, her hair sticking to it in web like patterns.
"Meme, tell me that's not your teacher." Black Star dodge the pillars of hair that shot down from the ceiling.
"It's not," she said, "that's... I don't know who that is." A brand new Kishen egg. Whoever it was, may not have been put on the list yet. Usually, it took at least two victims to identify where new hunting grounds had cropped up.
"Meme, Tsugumi; go after the other guy. We got this." Maka said. She still wasn't comfortable with just relaxing and let Black Star control where the blade went. "Fall into a rhythm of some kind so I can keep up."
"Then pull back." Black Star said, something finally clicked in his head. If scythes try and keep things at a distance, then instead of having her relax or predict what he was going to do, she should resist.
"Okay." Instead of reaching out to him with her wavelength, she pulled. Something finally locked into place, she could feel the tension as he pulled back as well. It was easier, she felt like she had more control now, rather than just being along for the ride. A consistent push and pull as he maneuvered around the enemy attacks and Maka felt like she could move again.
"There we go!" He was able to slice the pillars of hair with ease. There was less nagging about his footwork and he could feel how the shifting weight of the blade naturally circulated in fluid motions. The Kishen egg crashed to the floor. It crawled, it's body backwards on all fours as it scrambled toward him. With a sharp flip he nailed the creature right between the eyes. Doubt crept in when the red soul was freed from the corrupted body. "Well?" Maka pulled out of her weapon form. It was so unfair that she felt tired from a battle when she barely did anything.
"Well what?" Maka asked as she stretched.
"Tsugumi already has 99 souls." Black Star said. "Are you going to take it? Or are we bringing it back to Kid."
"Oh." The soul was warm in her hand. She had been curious about it before, but it wasn't necessary for a meister to consume the souls they captured. Sure she'd been using her weapon form more often now, but taking it felt like crossing some sort of line.
"You okay?" He asked. "You're making a weird face."
"We should bring it back to Kid." She put it in a bag for safe keeping. This was just for an investigation; she wasn't actually studying to be a Death Scythe. It wouldn't feel right.
Tsugumi followed Meme around to the back room, but they had lost the other pursuer. On the wall was a large faded mural. Asura's eyes were just below the surface of the earth with tiny hands reaching up to a creature made of the night sky with a large white star instead of a face. 'Death will die' was written in golden letters above it. There was a table below with a bunch of cards in yellowing plastic covers. Tsugumi picked one up, then looked at the others.
"Senpai," Tsugumi called to her friends in the other room, "what exactly did the Star Clan do?"
"Shinigami-sama and Sid would never say." Black Star said. "Just that the killed people who weren't on the list." They followed the sound of her voice to the dusty room. Tsugumi was holding a dated badge from DWMA.
"Death Scythes." She said with a hitch in her throat. "All of these belonged to Death Scythes." There were hundreds of badges, some had spilled onto the floor over the years. "Meme, who- where is your teacher?" Maka knew how proud her mom was that Spirit was the youngest Death Scythe, but now that she thought about it, the oldest would have been in their late 20s when she was in school. The Star Clan had tried to assassinate Shinigami-sama.
The ride back to Death City wasn't that long, but the emotional toll of the mission had drained them. Whoever Meme had been hoping to meet with had been eaten by the Kishen egg they found and the memory anomaly attached to the town kept them wandering in circles for a few hours. Maka had been nodded off in the passenger seat by the time they got to her hotel. He bid her farewell and returned to an empty apartment.
It'd been decades since he lived alone.
"Hey Tsubaki," he said as soon as she picked up the phone, "how's Oceania?"
"I think all Azuza-san did was work." Tsubaki sighed. "I don't know how anyone could over see it and East Asia at the same time." They likely had no other options at the time. "But the work's good. I've gotten through half the inital meetings with the countries now. A few sent little welcome gifts, but I think they're actually bribes. A lot of places haven't fully recovered from the Kishen yet."
"Yeah, I saw one of them today." Black Star laughed. "You would have totally wigged out. There was the Kishen Egg, with hair-"
"Stop, stop!" Tsubaki squirmed in her seat as he tried to describe it. He knew how she felt about horror movies.
"It's jaw unhinged like a snake."
"Black Star!" She scolded, laughing despite herself. She used the lull in the conversation to switch topics. "So Patty told me you're working with Maka now? How did that go?"
"How do you think?" He replied dryly. The apprehension in her voice showed clearly she thought it hadn't gone well. "It was fine. She's still a control freak, but we're figuring it out." He took a long swig of sake from the bottle. "I don't know how she sees anything with that soul perception shit. It was like walking into a room full of screaming toddlers. No wonder she's so distracted all the time." He shook his head. "Would you be able to do me a favor while your there?" He asked.
"Yeah, what is it?"
"Could you look into the Death Scythes that were stationed there before Azuza and Marie?" What they found in the dojo didn't sit well with him for a number of reasons. He hoped it had been hidden from him because he was a child, but if there was more to it he wanted to know before Kid sugar coated it. "Somethings not adding up." Being able to defeat a Death Scythe could be considered serious bragging rights, but random security guards? If the target was Kid, they wouldn't have been in a back alley in the middle of Death City. "I can't compare motives until I know what really happened."
"I'll see what I can do." Tsubaki said. "How's Angela?"
"I got a 'fine' text after asking her how school went." Black Star sighed. "Tried asking her for more details and got crickets." He heard Tsubaki hiss on the other end of the line. "Why? Did she tell you something else?"
"She got in a fight."
"Did she win?"
"Black Star." Tsubaki groaned. She wasn't surprised he was somewhat proud, but that was part of the problem.
"Answer the question."
"Yeah, she did, but that's not the point." Tsubaki said. He shouldn't be congratulating himself over it either. "She's not going to a combat school, she got in trouble for it." Of course, the way Angela told it, the other kid wasn't in the right either. "The culture shock's gotten to her a bit."
"Well, better they know now not to mess with her." He said. "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. She's a fast learner, she'll figure it out." Tsubaki had to go to her next meeting, and Black Star was left alone in the dark empty house.
His last few texts to Angela had gone unanswered. 'Fine' in all lowercase letters, the last thing she sent to him. It was too quite in the house. He threw on some show he'd seen a hundred times on TV to eat up the silence. Lulled to sleep by cold unfeeling light.