Tsubaki arrived at the house. There was a stillness in the air that didn't sit well with her. Empty halls greeted her as she navigated the winding passages to the training grounds. Where usually she'd find Black Star bouncing off the historic obstacles like his own personal playground, she found him sitting cross legged on a platform facing the outer forest. Wind raced through the branches, collecting the last few stubborn leaves for the coming winter.

"You should be wearing a jacket if you're out here." Tsubaki called up to him, but he did not answer. By now he should have been barking about how the cold didn't affect him like other people, turning his dull senses into a strength. "I have some good news." She shouted again. It wasn't enough to prompt him to come down and talk to her, so she climbed her way up. His head was bowed with eyes closed, focused on something she couldn't see. In his lap was a glaze bowl of icey water and his hand below the surface. "Black Star?" She tapped his shoulder gently at first, then shook him.

Water sloshed over the edge of the bowl and onto her knee. Like an ice pick running across her nerves, her body seized up and numbed. She lost the energy to breath. She was adrift as her soul was drawn away from every corner of her body until the spot dried and she was able to pull back into her body. In a panic, she grabbed Black Star's arm and pulled it out.

"Hey!" He said.

She might as well have given him a shot of adrenaline to the heart. One second he was nothing, and the next someone had their hands all over him shouting words he couldn't quite processes. His vision cleared, and when he noticed Tsubaki was scared, he felt less offended. He was happy to see her even if she was about ready to slap him.

"It was a training exercise." He said. "I'm supposed to pull out of it myself, not have someone else do it."

"I don't think you should be doing dangerous training exercises alone." She spilled the mystic water over the edge of the platform.

"Tsubaki, I needed that!" He was wobbly on his feet still, but refused to admit he needed more time to recover. Everyone had told him to start with a drop of water on the skin, so if he couldn't manage it, evaporation would rescue him. The drain the water put on the spirit was similar to the intense pull of his emotions wrapped up in the kishin's madness. He was supposed to be able to notice when it was happening and resist. It seemed he had done neither after sticking his hand in. "I don't have time to slowly get better and hope I'm moving in the right direction. I need to be normal now."

"Black Star..."

"Don't say it." He didn't want to hear from another person that he could be stuck the way he was, only putting off the inevitable decay of his soul. This was something he could fight, and he was going to win.

"Fine." Tsubaki stood up and dusted off her lap. Let him be surprised when Maka showed up and his dirty clothes were still all over the floor, she thought. "I was just trying to help."

"I know." He said, just barely catching a wisp of her ponytail as she jumped back to the ground. "I know you're trying to help, and I do appreciate it." He chased after her as she made it to the sliding doors to the mess hall. "This is just something you can't fix for me. I have to figure it out on my own."

Tsubaki saw Angela round the corner, her smile bright as she realized who had come home. A gold book in her tiny hands with a torn chain.

"Where's Noah?" Tsubaki asked. Neither he nor Gopher would allow a small child wander around with their precious magical artifact.

"He left." Angela hugged the book close. "It's okay though, because I listen better." Dread set in as Tsubaki noticed the bandages on Black Star, and the delay in his reaction to everything around them. Who had told Angela it was better that Noah was gone?

"Tsubaki, the thing is-"

"Where's Mifune?" She had very few people she could fully trust here. Regardless of how kind the family had tried to be as she helped them in their quest. Should she say enough was enough, he was the only one who might listen to her. DWMA students would be there in the morning, and regrettably, it might end differently from when she initially invited them. Until she had answers, she didn't want to make too hasty a judgement.

"Kitchen." Angela watched Tsubaki leave quickly with practiced grace. She knew how to pretend like nothing was wrong. Then Angela was drawn to Black Star's empty bowl. "You spilled it all!? That's not how the water trick works." She opened the book and flipped to a worn page of someone holding a drop in a small leaf with their fingertips touching the water. "Mifune did it like this."

Now even children were saying he'd been doing it wrong. He had to admit the drawing made the warrior look far cooler than him passed out over a bowel. Though he noticed the words shifted into more complicated sentences the longer he stared at it. According to it, the first step was to avoid physically moving once in the trance.

"No I didn't." He stood back up, even as Angela pointed to the drawing with a scowl. "I did exactly what it said, I didn't move, and I did it on hard mode too."

"You need the leaf." She snapped the book closed and held it close again. "Leaf is expert mode. Mifune can do it without falling asleep." She stuck out her tongue. They were fresh out of leaves, but she still acted like she had won the argument. Head held high; she marched away. To her knowledge, Mifune worked hard to get that water, and he had wasted it in less than a day. She didn't know there was a fountain of the stuff hidden in the plant room.

Katanas rested on towels in neat rows on the kitchen table. A mixture of water and baking soda sat in a cup next to the sink. Mifune held one of the katana blades up to the light, checking the pattern of the grain with a ceramic rod in his other hand.

"Mifune," Tsubaki did her best not to startle a man holding razor sharp weapons, "what happened to Noah?" He set aside the rod, drying off the blade before leaving it with the others.

"He sent an assassin after one of your friends." He said, having gathered the story from bits and pieces while Black Star tried to recover. "Whatever he had planned would have killed her. Black Star handled things the Old Way."

"What," Tsubaki repeated, "happened?" Mifune took up another sword to start the polishing process all over again.

"He destroyed him." He said. "Whatever he was, wasn't something with a soul. The other one ran off. Angela has been given the book in the meantime. Whatever guardian is inside it has taken a liking to her." He held up his sword to the light. "Though if it tries to treat her as it's peronal servant like the others, it will be turned into kindling."

"That's aweful." She hadn't wanted to believe Black Star would be capable of such things.

"It depends on who you think is more important." He said. "Whatever kindness that thing showed was a trick in order to get the people here to cooperate. The cure it promises could be the same thing. However violent the actions, what Black Star did protected an innocent child from being sacrificed." He could see Tsubaki mourning in the reflection of his sword. "He feels more conflicited about it than I do. The first time is always the hardest."

"There shouldn't be another time." Tsubaki said.

"These people have been assassins longer than you've been alive." Mifune set down his things and turned toward her. "Their moral code has always been to protect their own first and others second. If that's something you don't agree with, this isn't a good place for you to be. It will only get worse from here." She had watched as the paths stretched out for him had closed off one by one. There would be no where else to go soon, she knew that, but she wasn't sure she could watch the last thread of hope snap and doom him to repeat the cycle. "It's your choice to make."

He went back to sharpening his swords, long numb to enacting violence to protect something precious no one else valued. Now, more than ever, it was clear this was the safest place for Angela to be. It just might not be the safest for anyone who challenged the head of the family.

That night, Tsubaki thought long and hard about what Mifune had told her. When her back was turned, something horrible had happened, and no one in the house had stopped it. In fact, they'd let Black Star off with a slap on the wrist and bandaged his wounds. No one thought Lord Death should know what happened. Mifune was also trying his best by giving Black Star exercises he could practice to gain more control, but once again, Black Star thought he could skip past the grueling tasks to mastery with sheer determination alone. It was all too familiar.

She couldn't shadow him every step of is life to make sure he made the right choices. Unfortunately, it seemed, there were lessons he had to learn the hard way. He said so himself, this was something she couldn't fix for him. It wasn't her fault.

The emotional toll of everything was getting to her. Once so excited he'd set his sights on achievable goals, she was brought back to the fact Lord Death thought him joining the DWMA was a bad idea. The fact Black Star hadn't noticed she was missing for almost a full day truly weighed down on her as she stared at her open bags. Over and over she erased and retyped a message to Maka and Soul. How could she tell them what to expect? It wasn't fair to the other people waiting for a cure that Black Star had started to deteriorate. The situation had changed drastically and she honestly worried that Maka being the one to come could make things worse.

The artificer was setting up a trap. It seems Black Star was able to stop it, but they're still going ahead with the plans for a cure. I'm not sure there ever was one.

It would be a good idea to bring back up in case something has gone wrong.

She stared at the finale empty line. After all the time she'd spent, she didn't want to admit it was a waste. She was too attached to Black Star and the well being of his family to be objective. Should Lord Death's ruling change, she wasn't sure she would be able to enforce it herself. This wasn't like her brother, who'd grown distant over the years, Black Star had included her in all is wild imaginings of the future.

I will not be there.

There were few things in this world that could put the fear of god into the heart of a trained assassin, especially one as self-centered as Black Star. Getting caught banged up and moping around his own home was one of them. He'd answered the door that morning expecting an out of breath delivery person and instead came face to face with Maka and her stony faced companion. With unbrushed hair and an old tank top he'd over cut the armholes on, he felt pathetic and on display. He hid his bandaged hands behind his back, still sore from punching the pavement the night prior.

"Maka and Soul," he'd gotten the name right, but the weapon still seemed suspicious, "I can't believe you're here. How did you get here?" Asuka was notoriously hard to find and a pain to travel to. He let them inside, combing his hair as best as he could with his fingers. "I mean, it's good to see you, just a bit of a surprise is all." Maka and Soul shared a look. "We have food if you haven't eaten." He crossed his arms in a vain attempt to keep his shirt from slipping. "I still have to get ready."

"Are you okay?" Maka asked. He hadn't been lying, she could tell that much. The seals on his soul had multiplied since they last talked. She could see a rainbow of souls sporting them as well throughout their house. Some wearing more than others, but she had no idea what they meant. She wanted to offer to come back later, but Soul had been reasonably worried about the message Tsubaki sent them. Kid and the Thompsons weren't far off in case something was amiss. They wouldn't get another chance like this. Still, she couldn't help but over analyze the lit in his voice, and the harshness of his features, even with him welcoming them in with every fiber of his being.

"Me?" Black Star tried to shrug off the embarrassment. "I'm fine. Now you're here, I just need to change." He was now acutely aware of how many holes were in his sweatpants.

"We'll wait here." Soul shrugged.

Black Star nodded, playing it as cool as he could before running to his room. There was no time to style his hair, or pick out something sort of nice. He went with his assassin uniform, as it was the only thing clean. Sparing a few moments to warn the members of the household on the ground level they had rather dangerous company.

"She should have told him." Soul muttered under his breath. Now they got to be the bearer of bad news and the ones to rat him out. Granted, Tsubaki could have been too scared to, but then she should have given them more information.

"She did say this was their last idea." Maka whispered back. Through the walls, his soul was scampering around a small area as fast as it could, clearly excited to have visitors. She wished things could have been different. "We agreed to give it a shot." As sickening as it was, if this failed, they could return with more than they bargained for. Below their feet, were neat rows of starving kishin eggs, like fish in a barrel. She perked up when she caught a witch soul bobbing close to the ground.

"Who are you?" There was a young child munching on toast like she owned the place. Black Star was quick to get in between them.

"They're my friends Angela." He turned to address the pair. "Sorry, there's a lot to explain." As if they couldn't tell they were face to face with a witch. "A lot of people in my family are sick and she's been trying her best to heal them. She's harmless."

"I've been practicing really hard!" Angela chirped in agreement. "Black Star said I could help people if I put my mind to it. So, I've put all my brains into how an angel soul can fix the broken ones." It was too early to celebrate, but she beamed up at them with pride. "I've been trying to put new colors on old colors instead of mixing them. Mixing should make the new color stick. I like pink better than blue anyway." With her confidence, it was easy to tell there was something under the childish nonsense she was trying to describe. Maka's heart melted a little when she saw the child lift her thesaurus like it was her treasure. She'd given a look at the DWMA's copy a few times, it was a hard book to read. "Are we going to the basement Black Star?"

"That's where the people who need help are, right?" Maka said before Black Star could feed them anymore excuses. "We'd love to help."

"Are you sure?" He'd been prepared to launch into a rambling speech about how he'd come to realize the situation was more complicated than he first thought, that no one down there might be ready to be helped. Or even that he himself had had a bad experience down there not too long ago. Still, he always felt better when Maka was around and he was convinced anyone else around her would feel it too.

"It's worth a try." Soul shrugged, his guard still up. "And if it fails?"

"...If it fails I'll talk to Lord Death about what to do." Black Star conceded. He'd tried every soul expert he could think of that wasn't the god of order, they'd run out of possibilities. "My dad's the most cooperative, we'll be going there."

Maka walked arm and arm with Soul into the den of kishin eggs. The rows of poorly lit cells were disconcerting, as were the splatters that stained the floor by White Star's cage. He watched through the bars, quick to come up to them at the scent of new souls. Looking at him reminded Soul of the red demon that plagued his nightmares come to life. Large, and seemingly invincible, somewhere inside was a fragile person that failed to stay on the path Lord Death had laid out for them.

"She has to go in." Angela showed them a page of a resonance linking. "Follow one of the roads and go in to talk to him. If he agrees to throw up all the good people, he can be normal again." That was how Lord Death had helped Ragnarok. Maka had only seen it done with weapons before, never for nonmagical people. "He'll still look scary on the outside, but he'll be like the people upstairs." At the mention of going upstairs, White Star bristled and the room dropped a few degrees.

"It'll be okay dad." Black Star said. "We'll wait to make sure it works before doing anything." His words were enough to settle the giant. Soul couldn't help but eye the torn up wall at the back of the cage. Clearly, it was stronger than it acted.

"You ready Soul?" Maka squeezed his arm as she looked up at him. If he truly wasn't up for it, they could always turn tail and run.

"It seems easy enough." He made sure to resonate with her first, not willing to risk loosing her to the goliath that stood before them. Maka closed her eyes, and focused on the barbed soul before them. Somewhere there had to be a way she could be let in. Her grip tightened, as something pulled her in like a vacuum.

She spun out of control, feeling just as disoriented as when she'd been pulled out of the sky. An endless void shouting for attention to have their plight heard first, in case White Star's stubbornness doomed them all. She ignored them, first pinpointing Soul in the darkness before focusing on White Star.

It wasn't just spiked scales she'd picked up on, but icy waves frozen at the height of their arks, doomed never to come crashing back down. The closer she drifted, the harder it was to move. Her sensations prickled and numbed, daring her to think of a form that could brave the deathly storm. Somewhere in the snow capped peaks was a large valley that ran like a part through the sea.

She focused, forced to touch down on the ice in a dated DWMA uniform. A thin cardigan was her only protection from the blistering winds. In the heart of the divide was a frozen statue hunched over a bundle. It was the most human she'd ever seen White Star look, and yet frozen skin had blacked around the thinner parts of his body. There was a gaping wound across his chest that brought a pang of familiar guilt to the forefront of her mind.

His eyes moved.

Still frozen in place, he watched her approach. With each step, cracks formed along his jaw as he listed further over the bundle. It was buried firmly in the snow, so it couldn't be the storm he was protecting it from. She looked around at people frozen in combat within the waves, some with stars others with skulls. The lost souls of those who'd fallen to him glowed dimly below their feet.

"Don't cast your spell again." He hissed out in a high callous tone, as ice crystals broke off his vocal cords. "I don't want to forget. I t's all I have."

"Is this is a memory?" Maka marveled at the skewed perceptions the ice cast against the figures encased within it's iron clad grasp. The DWMA agents looked like monsters and the star clan were in civilian clothes. She had no doubt that it wasn't entirely how things had happened. She stooped down to take a look at what was in the bundle, when claws grabbed her roughly by the arm.

"Leave him out of this." Cracks echoed around them as the first wave dribbled in a thin slow stream back to the ocean floor. "You nosey bastards just can't leave him out of this!" It seemed for the first time, White Star recognized her as her own person. "You nearly killed him." A warped voice echoed on the wind of Shinigami-sama asking for a name. "You're the reason he keeps going outside." The ground rumbled beneath him. "You dared bring one of the voyeur's trinkets into my home like I wouldn't notice what you were trying to do!?" Her arm felt like it was going to snap in half. She saw a tuft of blue hair at their feet. "How many of you do I have to kill before you STAY AWAY!?"

"He brought me here to help you." Maka's teeth chattered, unable to resist the blistering cold. Soul was calling out to her, but she was so close. "He lied to me, pretended to be my friend, just so I'd come down here." She fought fire with fire, dwelling on the hurt until fresh hot tears streaked down her face. "This part of your life is over." She pointed down to the baby frozen on the ground. "He's almost an adult and you've missed all of it." Her mother had spent most of her childhood far out of reach."You're just doing what you want and saying it's for his protection." She knew how painful it was to be treated like a mindless object. "He needs you to be able to help him as he is now. You can't do that and keep them here too." The souls below grew brighter as they drifted to the surface. Water trickled in from the far corners of the ocean. There was no solid ground waiting as the ice started to melt. When the souls rose above the ice, the baby sunk deeper into the snow.

"You're lying." White Star began to sink as well, with Maka still in his grip. "He didn't bring you here." She wriggled, reaching out to Soul as the bodies around them melted and decomposed. "She did."

With a crack, the connection was lost.