A beautiful garden, glistening with dew in the softening daylight. The world was empty again. When Patty looked down at her clothes, it was the spartoi uniform she'd arrived in. Her head was clear, as she was reminded of how many times she had to fight to find herself in a waking dream. Seven times, seven sins, seven chapters. Kid was here. She got up to her feet, running as a combination of joy and adrenaline helped her pick out traces of her friends' voices that were woven through the leaves.

"Soul?" She saw a flash of white turn in her direction. Practically bursting through the bushes, she tackled him. He was in the same old clothes, with ruby red eyes. For good measure, she pushed on his cheeks to see if his teeth were as jagged as ever. Pure, manic laughter ripped from her chest. They hadn't been able to find each other last time, but by some miracle they made it.

"You're crushing my spleen." He wheezed out, with his back grinding into the dirt covered path. She jumped off of him, then offered him a hand. He didn't move with the same exuberance. As he dusted himself off, she held up seven fingers, bouncing in place with a wide smile. He stifled a small sigh and her smile fell. "I'll feel better once we find Kid." That should have been the end of it. He turned to leave and found his wrist caught in a tight grip instead.

"I'm sorry." She thought he'd been too wrapped up in his head to notice the things she'd tried to keep secret get drawn out, and maybe he had been. To her, the number of times she'd tried to prove she could have been a better meister than Maka if just given a chance, it was embarrassing. Even if he knew she didn't actually mean anything by it, or could help how she felt, she still thought he deserved an apology from someone.

"It's fine, I was exaggerating." With his mind fully preoccupied trying to figure out why Patty of all people was looking at that the ground over hurting someone, it was like a fog had lifted. Or maybe that was more to do with the fact he finally was alone instead of surrounded by energy draining puppets. Either way, Patty sniffled, refusing to let go of his wrist.

"I mean, about dragging you here." All of her friends had jumped at the chance to help Kid without an iota of thought to their own wellbeing. She'd taken for granted that they'd come out the other side of it okay. "I know you could have said no..." In no universe would Soul openly reject someone who needed him. Grazing the inside of his wrist almost a hair too long, she let go of his wrist. "I shouldn't have asked." They both had partners already, it was foolish of her to even consider it, especially with everything that was already going on. "I seriously owe you one." There was something Liz always said about pouring from empty cups, but the more she tried to apologize to Soul, the more confused he looked.

"You and Kid would do the same thing for us." He said. "Don't worry about it."

"Yeah..." She needed more confirmation than simple debts. "We're still friends, right?"

"Of course!" He felt entirely himself, there shouldn't have been a reason for Patty to be acting so somber. Usually, she was the first to pretend like nothing was wrong, "Come on. I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sick of books right now."

Chaper 7 - PRIDE

Tsubaki stared at the red flowers longer than she probably should have. Even if they were fake, her brother's words had rattled her. The longer Black Star took to train her into a Death Scythe, the longer she had an excuse to stay away from home. She loved her parents, but seeing how quietly they had tried to erase the last two years of her brother's life had left her torn up. With both children absent, they could craft whatever narrative they wanted about their family, but the reality could never live up to such wild imaginings.

She had been able to hide her feeling by living vicariously through others. There was no need for the spotlight of rebellion to fall on her when someone else was taking center stage. What happened after that wasn't her fault then, or at least, that was what she'd been able to tell herself so far. Helping a human being rise above the gods was a quest that would never be completed. For the first time since they arrived, she went to seek Black Star out herself.

"Perfect." He said the moment she was in ear shot. Both his hands framed the nearby shrubbery like a view finder in a camera. He had one eye closed as he moved to have her in the frame instead. "I'm thinking if we make a huge blast through all this flowery stuff, everyone will know where to meet up." There wasn't any one tree taller than the other. It seemed even though they were granted permission to be themselves once more, the chapter was still trying to foil their plans.

"Doesn't it bother you?" She had seen him brush off every transformation as nothing more than a costume, even the ones that had corroded his sense of self. Her meister's ability to compartmentalize was beyond delusional, at this point she feared he was content with letting everything fade away like a bad memory.

"I don't have allergies." A joke and a shrug was not enough to soften her features, so he quickly shifted gears. "What do you expect me to say Tsubaki? It's all just emotional dream garbage dug up to distract us. We were all fine before." He threw his hands in the air, tired of being judged for not treating the mission with an expected level of seriousness.

"I wasn't." She said. "It wasn't 'garbage' either." There would never be a good time to bring up the things that had been bothering her. "I promised my family I'd never kill someone who wasn't on Shinigami-sama's list, but then you-"

"Mifune was on the list." They had been told explicitly to avoid that mission, she'd even taken him to another country, and still he'd found a way to throw himself on the front lines.

"So was Angela." Tsubaki said before Black Star could brush her off again. "Where is the line?" Mifune was by all accounts, an uncorrupted soul no where near in danger of becoming a kishen egg. He'd been a powerful warrior fighting to protect their enemies, but he'd done so trying to inflict as little harm as possible. The fact Black Star couldn't immediately come up with an answer turned her concern into anger. "I am not doing that ever again." She said firmly. "I'll hunt kishen-eggs, but I will not be used to kill another innocent person like that. I don't care whose side they're on."

"Tsubaki, it's not like I'm going out of my way to hurt people." He said. "We both agreed to help. If we'd been allowed to go in the first place, maybe then they wouldn't have lost Kid, but they had to bench us because some stupid screen told Nygus I wasn't up for it. Mifune was the one that wouldn't let us through. You seriously think with that witch black mailing him, he'd just stop trying to kill us if we asked to be his friend? Neither of us had a choice."

"Then say it." She crossed her arms. "Say you won't use me against another person like that again." This wasn't her being cagey about hypotheticals or lineage, it was something he had done. She'd been too scared in the moment to say something then, wasn't willing to let him die mid combat, but she wouldn't be misunderstood now. If he was going to continue signing up for missions where they'd be forced into fights to the death with ordinary people, she wanted no part in it.

"Tsubaki... I won't make you fight anything you don't want to." He said. "Kishen egg or otherwise, being my partner doesn't mean you have to fight every battle I do." She could sit on his couch playing videogames the rest of his life and he wouldn't hate her for it. If all she wanted to do was hunt kishen eggs, he'd help her do that. "Now, are you going to help me beat up this shrubbery?"

Maka still felt sick. Every inch of skin rubbed against the universe around her like it was powered glass, so close to the source of the books magic and to leaving it far behind. Pride, the mother of all sins, had left their minds untouched, but Maka still felt hollowed out inside. Unlike the book, there was no clear answer when the real Asura would be captured once more, or when the people she'd grown closest too would be driven apart without the school forcing them to be together.

Like a paintings on the wall, she could see people find each other again through the hedge maze, a little anxious her demeanor would be permanently colored by discomfort until she was back outside. Though she couldn't help the stitch in her heart at the sight of Patty reaching out for Soul. He really was an idiot sometimes.

"Maka~" From behind a tall warm figure hugged her and dug a sharp boney chin into her scalp. It kind of helped, the hand covering her eyes not so much. "It'll be fine. Nothing's going to change." Blair said.

"I know." She hated the thickening of her voice, the way her body geared up to make tears she refused to cry. Definitely not now when there were bigger things to worry about. There had just been so many times her barriers had been torn down, only to be told again and again that it was okay because they were still partners. He never challenged that it there should have been more. "Ugh, why do you care?" She pushed Blair off her and fanned her face. No good would come from being sucked into a spiral like this. She'd been doing so good at acting 'normal' too.

"I spent a long time waiting for my person to come back to me." It hadn't been lost on her that Maka was the one to hold her more, wonder where she was, or even tell her when they were going on missions. Part of her had hoped she could drag that sort of care out of Soul the way she had with Elly, but realistically it was a lost cause. In this life, Maka was the one that chose to take care of her. "I wouldn't wish that on anyone." She poked Maka in the cheek nearly knocking her over.

"I'm fine!" Maka was able to say with a little more sincerity. These things took time, and being reminded of a slew of disappointments hadn't helped her much. She was still a long way away from severing her need to define herself by the people around her, but it was a start.

"Then why are we still lurking in the bushes?" Blair teased. Rolling her eyes, Maka marched ahead. It would be a bit before she could talk at a normal volume without sounding pre-weepy, but at least this way she could brush off any questions. "Wait for me!" Blair chased after her, turning into a small black cat before jumping onto Maka's shoulder.

Fire and Thunder got distracted by the swarm of butterflies that echoed the colors of spring. They chased them around a clearing in the garden. It felt like forever since Kilik had seen them genuinely smile, he felt bad for interrupting. They still had a job to do. As he scooped them up into his arms he promised himself this would be the last life threatening mission they'd be going on for a while. Acting as a spokesperson for the school wasn't the most glamourous position, but it would give them the closest thing they could have to a normal childhood while working for the DWMA. Then a large, shadowy blast rocketed across the garden behind him. Kilik tensed at the destruction with Fire and Thunder cheering loudly as Black Star dusted himself off.

"I think I'll put my alter here." Giving a cheeky thumbs up, Black Star let Tsubaki step out of her weapon form.

"When you said you were trying to get everyone's attention, I didn't realize you meant signing the book!" She tightened her ponytail and used her arms to hide her growing smile. Just as they had thought, their friends had been drawn to the destruction like moths to a flame. Liz, happiest of all, did a headcount, but found no mop of black and white hair among them.

"Congratulations." From overhead, the Index floated. Shadows danced across it's boney face in the closest approximation of a smile a bone could have. The children who waded through sin to get here were less than thrilled. "I do hope you were able to find what you were looking for."

"Where's Kid!?" Liz shouted. The index drifted it's featureless head to one side.

"If you weren't able to find him, he must have sorted himself already." It revealed the exit as promised, a large stone archway toward a bright light. "There is nothing more to be read."

"Then we have to go back." Patty looked around wildly, but her friends were beaten down and exhausted. They had just barely made their way out of some of those chapters, and even then, Kid surely would have noticed the chaos they were causing. "There has to be somewhere we haven't looked. He could have been unconscious, or side tracked by an asymmetrical door." The chances of him being held paralyzed by a self-inflicted sense of doom was too great. Liz took her hand and the two held the magical creature at gun point. "Where did he get sorted!?"

"The eighth chapter." Black Star said with a drawn out sigh.

"Don't be absurd." The Index glided around, though none of the spartoi squad allowed themselves to be human shields for the thing that held them hostage. "Eibon's study of humanity's sins ends here. Seven sins, seven chapters."

"Kid would make up a sin just so he could be in the eighth chapter." Black Star insisted. The index was overwhelmed by a chorus of agreements. Kid had a habit of putting his loved ones in danger to avoid the discomfort of 'wrong' numbers. Once Black Star had fished him out of this place, he would force the shinigami to apologize to all of them for making their quest more difficult than it already had to be.

"There is no need for another." Said the Index. Having seen Eibon try not once, but twice to pull an eighth sin out of pride, it knew the overlap was too great to justify an additional entry. The draft had remained in unsequential segments the wizard had then tried to find places for amongst the other chapters. Only now, they were being stitched together with nonsensical ramblings.

It could feel the itch of fresh ink as mad writings threatened to overtake it's realm. None of it was good enough to include, and yet, the young demi-god Noah gave him kept trying to expand the darkness that surrounded him into it's own shameful place in the book. It had done well to contain it thus far, but as the children kept insisting there had to be another chapter, the first few sentences forced itself into the margins of pride. Letters clawed through the upturned earth Black Star left behind, soaring up in a twister of chicken scratch.

"No!" The index increased the contrasting light to wash out the words into nothingness again. The gapping hole in the ground spread further. Black Star squinted into the darkness, then turned to his partner.

"Tsubaki?" He held out his hand to her. The others were more able to pick up on the madness oozing into Pride from the unfinished chapter. She looked from Black Star to the fury brewing just below the surface of the earth knowing their friend was the source and shook her head. She would not raise her blades to a friend, not like this. Black Star took his hand back, a little disappointed but smiling none the less. "I'll bring him back in one piece, I promise."

"I know you will." She obscured the index's view in a cloud of smoke. Magic was patching over the hole in long white stripes. Black Star was able to slip in just before the final white stripe patched up the garden.