A/N: Hey, everyone! Here's another chapter of this fic! What else do I have to say?

In other news, I finally finished my "Soul Eater" anime marathon just a week or so ago. I must say, in retrospect, I can see why the anime-exclusive ending wasn't exactly unanimously loved by the fandom. You can certainly tell where the cutoff line between adapted manga content and anime-exclusive content is in the anime. It was alright in the beginning, but as I got closer to the ending, I could tell that certain plotlines, plotlines that were set up and being built up in previous episodes adapted from the manga, were being rushed to a conclusion. And, of course, there's the infamous finale. They really tried to wrap all of that up in one neat, little, regular-sized episode. Personally, I think an anime-exclusive ending would've been better serviced as a two-parter or even a three-parter. But hey, what can you do?

Despite all of that, I'm still sad to see my "Soul Eater" reexperience end after all this time. Fifty-one episodes of adventure, drama, and comedy. What a ride. It was a lovely blast from the past, and I'd love to do it all over again when I have enough time. Moreover, I'm down to read the part of the manga that the anime wasn't able to adapt, in full, just to experience what the fans are clamoring about in a remake that is hopefully still yet to come. As I mentioned before, I was already able to read the final chapter and spoil the ending to myself. But I'm down to get more context behind that ending. When I have the chance, of course. My brain is still teeming with story ideas, and I'm still spending whatever free time I have to brainstorm potential fics.

Anyway, enough rambling from me! On with the chapter. ENJOY!

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Entry #4
Date: April 2, 2009

A sound soul dwells within a sound mind and a sound body.

That's the first sentence in the first chapter of my DWMA textbook. It's the same as everyone else's textbooks.

A sound soul dwells within a sound mind and a sound body.

It's a nice sentence, but I didn't know what it meant when I first read it in class. I asked Maka, and she said that it's the mantra that all Meisters and Weapons live by when they protect the world from evil. According to her, it's the reason why she and Soul are so strong. According to her, it's why Black Star and Tsubaki are strong. According to her, it's why Kid, Liz, and Patty are so strong. They're strong together. According to her.

And according to her, it's the reason why Ragnarok and I will be strong.

A sound soul dwells within a sound mind and a sound body.

But how would that sentence apply to me? That's a question that I'm very afraid to ask Maka about. It's because it just doesn't.

I don't have a sound mind. No. How could I? I have nightmares every night about the time I spent with Lady Medusa. Every night, I dream of every night where I killed for her. I killed and killed and killed to become a Kishin. That was what Medusa wanted from me. To kill and kill and kill. I've killed so many people that I don't remember any of the lives that I've taken. No one specific. I probably remembered some faces and some names when it first started, but they've all since become a nameless, faceless pile of mush.

Sometimes, that's actually what I dream of, whenever I'm not on the beach with my shadow. I can see it so vividly sometimes. An endless pile of mush with eyes and mouths all over and arms sticking out from everywhere, ending in grubby hands that reach for anything and everything. It's not a human body at all. It's not any sort of animal that anyone knows. It's just something. It's not nothing, but it's not somebody either. It's not even a nobody. That's all there is to it. It's just something.

That's what I'm going to call it. Something.

But even if it's Something, I know what Something is. It's my nightmare's manifestation of all the people that I've killed over the years. Something haunts me sometimes. Every time it does, it's one of the worst nightmares ever. My nightmare always starts out with me looking at it. It moans and groans at me. I think Something wants to speak to me. I can never tell what it's saying, but I know it's cursing me for killing everybody that it once was.

Even if it doesn't show up in my dreams all the time, Something haunts me in other ways. It haunts me in my thoughts. All the people that I've killed follow me everywhere. I don't care if Maka says that Medusa forced me into it. I still took so many lives in my past life. You can't just run away from that.

How can I have a sound mind if it's haunted by an endless number of souls?

And how can I have a sound body if I'm sharing my body with someone like Ragnarok?

Ragnarok is asleep right now, which is why he's not writing in this diary. Ms. Marie's seen my previous entries and says that I should write whenever Ragnarok doesn't come out. Whenever he's asleep. At least, that's what I call it. I don't know how Ragnarok sleeps.

Oh, before I forget. Dear Diary.

It's me again. Crona.

I need to remember to start off with that in all of my entries. But I still don't know why I need to do that, though. You already know why. It's not like you're a real person, anyway. If you were, you'd be giving me advice on how to deal with my nightmares. How to deal with Something. How to deal with everything.

How to have a sound mind and a sound body so I can have a sound soul dwelling inside.

If I don't have a sound soul, then how am I supposed to be of use to the DWMA? I've been on a couple of missions now, all with partners. At least, that's what Lord Death calls them. I think of them more as chaperones. And every time I go out on a mission with them, I always find a way to screw everything up.

Last week, I went with Kid to find a conjoined twin Kishin Egg. I mentioned them in the second entry, but I forgot to mention the reason why got away the first time we tried to take them down. It was because of me. I couldn't deal with attacking a person with two heads on one body. I didn't know how two minds could decide which way to move their single, shared body. It was a lot different from me and Ragnarok. At least I got to decide which way my body moves. All Ragnarok does is beat me up. Anyway, the Kishin Egg tried to crush me under some bookshelves, and Kid had to save me on his skateboard thing. Then, he freaked out because of all the collapsed bookshelves.

I tried to be of more use the second time Kid and I met the conjoined twin Kishin Egg. I really did. But I just took one look at its heads and freaked out again. I guess, in a way, it reminds me of Something. It's got two heads sticking out of a thin but flabby body, with long arms and long legs that look like sticks. I couldn't land a single hit on it. Not even Screech Alpha helped. Who knew that conjoined twins could cover their ears just by using two arms and pressing the other sides of their heads together? Kid finished off the Kishin Egg with his Death Cannon, and we got two souls out of it.

Kid wanted me to take one of the souls for Ragnarok, but I let him have it. That way, Liz and Patty could have one soul each; to keep the number of souls they each have at an equal rate, so Kid can maintain symmetry. Kid hid it well, but I can tell he was very happy about that. It's not like I was of much use in the battle, anyway.

And starting yesterday, I went on a bigger mission. I was assigned with Black*Star, Tsubaki, a couple of other students named Ox Ford and Harvar D. Eclair, and two teachers: Sid the scary zombie, and the DWMA's newest teacher, Mifune. We went to the Alps to find a Kishin Egg that was rumored to be devouring children in their sleep every winter. According to Lord Death, the DWMA had been trying to take out this Kishin Egg for a few years every Christmas, but they kept having no luck. So, this year, they decided to strike the target during the spring, when they assumed the creature would be hibernating.

They call this Kishin Egg "Krampus".

Black*Star and Tsubaki were nice to me as usual, but Ox and Harvar weren't. They don't like me, just like many of the others in the DWMA. They look at me with such hateful and disgusted looks. All of them do. I don't blame them. I already betrayed them once. If I were in their shoes, I wouldn't trust me either. After all, how could I betray them and then get welcomed back with open arms? I don't care if Maka says that Medusa forced me into it. I still betrayed them, and I did it for Medusa. You can't just run away from that.

I think Ox and Harvar hate me the most out of everyone, though. They insult me every day. Everyone does, or they otherwise whisper about me behind my back. But Ox and Harvar don't whisper. They insult me like it's their mission.

Maka, Soul, and the others are always protecting me from them. I feel so ashamed. I know protecting me isn't helping Maka, Soul, and their friends. I bet that everyone else in the DWMA hates them too for protecting me. But they still do it. They still protect me from Ox, Harvar, and everyone else. Maka says it's because that they're my friends, and I'm their friend. But I don't feel like a very good friend. I mean, what kind of friend lets their other friends risk their reputations just for themself?

Anyway, Ox and Harvar were insulting me again during the mission, and Black*Star and Tsubaki stood up for me again. Black*Star and Ox nearly got into a fight because of me, but Sid and Mifune stopped them. I shouldn't be surprised; they're teachers, so they're supposed to keep the students in order. So they stick up for me too if Maka, Soul, and the others aren't around. They all try to be nice to me too, but I can tell: they don't trust me, even if they really want to, even if Lord Death tells them to.

Sid is still very scary. I still don't know how to deal with zombies. Whenever he's teaching class or proctoring an exam or supervising a mission, I always get this feeling that he wants to eat me. Or anyone in his vicinity. And his eyes are totally white with no pupils. How can I tell if he's looking at me or not? Maka said that he caught Soul trying to cheat on a test once by covering his entire body in cheat-sheets under his clothes. I don't know how Sid was able to tell. How can someone like Sid be able to tell something like that without any pupils? It's so weird and freaky, and I just don't know how to deal with it.

Mifune is also very scary, but in a different way. He's serious all the time, and whenever he's teaching class, he's very tough on the students. I think only Maka and Ox like his teaching methods, but they're very smart, so of course they like him. When he teaches combat, though, all of the students like him better. He always manages to find weaknesses in your fighting style, and he always had advice on how to manage yourself in situations. He's still very scary when he teaches combat, but at least there's a field where he can put his seriousness to good use.

Fortunately for me, Mifune doesn't seem to think too much about me, and so he doesn't single me out as the least-liked student. I've watched enough of Maka and Soul's rental movies to know that every teacher has their least-favorite student. If there's anyone that fills that role for him in class, it's Black*Star. I feel like that's why he was assigned to supervise the Alps mission. Either he volunteered or Lord Death specifically chose him. Either way, it's because of Black*Star.

The two of them have history. Mifune used to work for Arachnophobia and fought Black*Star three times. Black*Star keeps telling me that he'd always beat Mifune, but Tsubaki says it's not true. Mifune beat him the first two times and then got beaten the third time. He later joined the DWMA after Arachnophobia fell, all because of Black*Star and Tsubaki. But it's clear to me that they have some unfinished business. I don't know what that unfinished business is, but whatever it is, I don't think that I can deal with it.

Oh, back to the Alps mission. That's right.

We arrived in a small village in the Alps. It was cold and snowy for a springtime day, but I didn't feel it that much, even though they gave me a jacket to wear like the others. I've always been used to the cold. Lady Medusa would sometimes send me to the coldest places on Earth to find people to kill and souls to collect. I think there's something in the Black Blood that insulates me from extreme temperatures. Ragnarok never gives me a straight answer on that. I don't know too much about my own blood. I only know that it can turn into Ragnarok, that it can harden and take any shape that Ragnarok and I want, and that it induces madness in anyone that contracts it.

Anyway, after we arrived, we searched around for Krampus. The villagers weren't very friendly and cooperative with us. I mean, I didn't like them all that much either. They were mostly old and shriveled up like raisins. I didn't know how to deal with people that had so many wrinkles on their skin. It makes them look like they got crumpled up like paper by someone and thrown away in the garbage can. It's very unsettling. Tsubaki said they're all probably on edge all the time because Krampus lived near them. Turns out it wasn't true, but it made sense at the time. I didn't see a lot of children in the village anyway. I thought that maybe Krampus ate them all a long time ago and that's why the villagers weren't friendly.

We found an innkeeper who was friendly enough to give us rooms to stay in for the night. He also told us where Krampus was last spotted. He had a fake right eye that kept spinning around in all directions in his socket and couldn't stand still. That freaked me out the most in the village. First off, I don't know why he needed a fake eye if it wouldn't work. Second off, I don't know how to deal with eyes that move around in different directions. Third off, I don't know how to deal with one-eyed people either, so it wouldn't have mattered if the innkeeper had a fake eye or not.

But Ragnarok thought it was funny, so he stole the fake eye when the innkeeper was sleeping. I kept telling him that it wasn't a nice thing to do, but he didn't listen. When the innkeeper woke up, he stumbled around like a zombie, like Sid, looking for his eye. I was too scared to tell him what actually happened. If there's one thing that I can't deal with more than a one-eyed person, it's an angry one-eyed person.

The next day, we went searching for Krampus in the mountains. For a while, we couldn't find it, and it was so cold that even our jackets weren't working. Eventually, we decided to go back to the village to come up with a different plan. But when we returned, we found it destroyed and many of the villagers dead. We knew that it was Krampus straight away. When the survivors saw us, they blamed us for the attack.

And by us, I meant me. They all blamed me.

They made that clear to us when we arrived. When Black*Star demanded answers from them, they told us why they weren't friendly in the first place. It wasn't because of Krampus's attacks. It was because of me.

It was because of me. I had been at that village before; I just didn't remember it at the time.

A/N: And that marks the end of the chapter! Yeah, yeah, I know that this was a premature wrap-up to the chapter, and that it wrapped up a lot quicker than anyone would've liked. However, I realized that the chapter was getting a little too long for my liking, and I honestly didn't know how to proceed from here, so I needed more time to come up with the second half. Much of the writing for this story is a little improvisational and on-the-dot, after all. Don't worry, though; I'll provide an in-universe explanation for the sudden end and the break between chapters in the next chapter.

But anyway, we get to see that Crona is doing missions with the DWMA and hanging out with Black*Star, Tsubaki, Kid, Liz, and Patty. However, he's still grappling with his immense guilt and his horrific memories of the time he spent with Medusa. And now, it seems like a part of his past is catching up to him in the Alps! Will he manage to overcome this unexpected dilemma? Stay tuned!

Well, hope you enjoyed the chapter! TheCartoonFanatic01 is out. Watch out for the next chapter, or I'll take your soul!