one damn thing after another - part 2
And Part 2:
I open my eyes. No dark room, no piano, no demon. I check myself. No suit. I check Maka. Boring clothes, no dress. A shame.
…And I thought it was a shame she wasn’t wearing the black blood dress, so my brain isn’t totally back to normal. But I’m not stuck alone with the demon guy for all eternity, so it’s cool.
I push myself up on my elbows to see Maka better. She’s looking around like she doesn’t know quite where the hell we are, either, but then it hits her, and she turns to me and grins.
“Hah,” she says. “We rock!”
“We do rock,” I agree. Or she does, anyway. It’s nice that I actually remember what happened now. How does that work? Did they patch me up or something? Or did pulling my soul out of the book do that?
Well, whatever.
I’m not gonna be awake much longer, I can tell. Maka’s face is swimming in and out of focus. Maybe this time I won’t swoon my way into a cursed book, though.
“You’re a great piano teacher, Soul,” she says, looking basically delighted about everything. She’s cute when she gets like that. If I told her she was cute, she’d hit me with a book, though.
“Yeah, well. You’re hot in that dress.” And that’s all the awake I had in me. Clearly, because fainting in front of Maka is the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever done, I’m planning on making a habit of it.
* * *
“Maka, please. You need to stop panicking. He’s fine. Nygus-sensei says he’s just sleeping normally. Maka, you’ve been standing there all day, at least sit down.”
“Don’t worry, Tsubaki, I’m not panicking. I’m just checking up on him.”
“Checking up on what? He hasn’t done anything.”
“Well, what if he stops breathing?”
“Maka…”
Waking up in the infirmary to the sound of someone trying to stop Maka from freaking out. It’s a definite improvement on those times I screamed myself awake.
“Maka, don’t be stupid,” I say. Hah, I don’t even sound sick anymore. That’s what escaping from an evil book will do for you. Clear those minor ailments right up.
Or maybe that was the month I spent immobilized in bed. Shit, I bet I’m completely out of shape. Black Star’s gonna beat me into one giant bruise and call it physical therapy.
“Soul, do you know how long you’ve been asleep this time?”
She sounds pissed, so I’m gonna guess a while. I like how she acts like I do it on purpose.
“How long?” I open my eyes to get the full effect of the outrage.
“Three days!” she screams. Her face is all red, her eyes have huge dark circles under them, and her hair’s sticking every which way like she’s been trying to pull it out.
This was definitely worth waking up for.
“Compared to the month, I’m improving by leaps and bounds,” I tell her. Tsubaki smiles at me and wanders out the door. I know how she works. This means she’ll give us ten minutes alone, and then throw Black Star at us. Like a punishment.
Better make the most of the ten, then.
Maka’s still shouting, something about getting sucked into books like an idiot and scaring her half to death. I hold my hand out to her before she gets around to blaming herself for it. She always does, sooner or later.
The hand throws her off her stride, though. Knew it would.
She takes it, but she looks like she thinks I’m up to something. I kind of am. But since I’m pushing my luck, I might as well push it more. After all, I spent a month in a coma. I can put all kinds of weird behavior down to that. I pull her closer until she has to hop up on the bed or fall on top of me. I’d have been good either way, but she goes for the hopping on the bed option.
“Are you still being weird?” she asks, eyes flicking back and forth between mine. I bet she’s checking that my pupils are the same size. I smile at her.
“Maybe a little weird,” I admit. “Remember how Kid came out of the book like twice as obsessive as he went in?”
“I remember,” she says, quirking her eyebrows at me. “He’s more or less over it now.”
“Remember how he glommed onto Liz and Patty like a leech and drove them crazy?”
She smiles a little in spite of herself. “Yes. He hasn’t gotten over that.”
“I think it’s because, when you’re in the twilight zone like that, you’ve got nothing to do but think about what’s important to you. And how, once you get out of there, you’re never letting it out of your sight.”
“You think that, huh?”
“I think that,” I agree. “It’s what I did.” All that brooding in the dark with a demon for company, I had to think of something good. I decided to take Maka to visit my brother, for one thing. And for another…
I tug her down close. Close enough that she’s got to know what I’m after. Got to. Because there is no way she can make me say this out loud. We’re so close I can feel her smirking.
Oh, hell. She’s messing with me.
“Maka!”
She giggles, she actually giggles. But then she kisses me, so I’m willing to overlook it.
As advertised, kissing is good. Or maybe just kissing Maka is good. Like I’m allowed to forget all the crazy stuff in the background for a little while, and think about nothing but her.
It’s peaceful, that’s what it is. It’s a lot of other things, too, but mostly it’s peaceful.
Or at least it is until she pulls back, grins at me like a madwoman, and then leans forward again and bites the shit out of my neck.
“What the-ow!”
She’s laughing so hard now that she can’t sit up straight; she’s pitched over onto me. Which means she’s laughing directly into my ear. Which I could do without.
“Mine,” she gasps between laughing fits.
Okay, okay. So I knew about the cheating issues. I predicted jealous and crazy possessive, maybe even some stalking, and I was okay with all that. I did not predict biting.
Although…I probably should have. Thinking it over.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I ask her, and it would probably sound a lot angrier if I could keep myself from hugging her closer. But I can’t. Lame. “Couldn’t you leave a hickey like a normal jealous maniac?”
She just keeps laughing in my ear, intermittently gasping about morning breath and idiots who get sucked into books. But she’s holding onto me like she’s afraid I’ll get away.
I guess I can’t even hold the biting against her. Sure, she’s laughing-but I hear the hysteria in there. I’m a pro at hysteria, and I can tell that if she weren’t laughing, she’d be crying. I wonder how much sleep she’s gotten over the last three days. Hell, over the last month. I’m guessing not much.
Meanwhile, my neck hurts like a bitch. She bit me hard, what the hell?
Lucky for us, Death the Kid shows up before Black Star, because if it had been Black Star, the mockery would have been epic and undying. And it’s lucky Kid’s without Liz and Patty for once, because I don’t even want to think what they’d make of this.
Kid just frowns at us like it’s bothering him that we aren’t square in the middle of the bed, or whatever it is that bothers Kid.
It gets Maka to stop laughing, though. Mostly. She straightens up, still snickering a little, wipes her eyes, and grins at me. I guess we’re not gonna talk about this at all. It’s just going to be. I grin back at her. She really can be the coolest.
And she doesn’t know it, but there’s gonna be payback for the neck thing. Laugh it up while you can, Maka Albarn.
“I’d better go tell Nygus-sensei you’re up; she’ll want to check on you,” she says, still sounding giddy. She leans down (I brace myself) and kisses me on the forehead. Gently, even. And then she’s off.
Kid, though, is still standing next to the bed with his arms crossed, smirking at me.
“Liz will be pleased,” he says.
The idea of Liz caring about my personal life at all is beyond terrifying. Why are there so many nosy people around here?
“Really?” It seems like a safe response.
“Really,” he confirms. “She’s been giving nightly lectures on how perfect you and Maka are for each other ever since we transferred in.”
I can’t think of a thing to say to that, and I’m not going to try.
If Kid’s put off by the silent staring, he doesn’t show it. He just wanders closer than I’d strictly like him and eyeballs my neck.
Maybe it looks like a bruise. Maybe I can pass it off as something that happened when I fell out of bed.
“Your bite mark is asymmetrical.”
Maybe not.
“You’d better not be thinking of giving me a matching one on the other side,” I warn him.
“Of course not; my mouth is the wrong size,” he says, clearly insulted by the very idea. “I’ll have to leave it to Maka, won’t I?”
I’m still too tired to spaz out. I mean, it’s not surprising that he’d figure out it was Maka. Who the hell else would have bitten me?
I can’t believe she bit me.
“But for now, we’d better cover that up,” he says. “Otherwise everyone will know how perverse you are.”
“Hey, I’m not the perverse one!”
“Hm. I had thought better of Maka. To leave something uncompleted like this, with her high standard of perfection, it’s…it’s shocking.”
Hang on, he thinks it’s perverse because she only got me on one side?
…What am I thinking? Of course he does. He’s Death the Kid.
“Even Liz and Patty wouldn’t leave something as blatantly wrong as this.”
Uh. He doesn’t mean that the way it sounds, right? Though. It would explain all the collared shirts.
Gah.
“There,” he says, tying a perfect knot in the green scarf he found to put around my neck. He obviously didn’t trust me to do it myself. For sure, I’d have gotten the knot crooked. “Tell them you were cold. And tell Maka I’m shocked.”
He wanders out of the room and leaves me to my unsettling thoughts about Liz and Patty and symmetrical bite marks.
What is it with people lately? First Harvar telling me deep, dark secrets, and now this. Do I look like the kind of guy who wants to know this shit? I am not that guy.
Black Star takes this time to kick down the door. I’ve never been happier to see him; I am absolutely sure he’s not going to tell me about his secretly deep relationship with Tsubaki. I’m pretty sure I understand his relationship with Tsubaki better than he does, for one thing.
“Come on, Soul, get outta bed! You’ve gotta be all kinds of fat and lazy by now. We need to fix you up!” He cracks his knuckles.
Do I know Black Star, or do I know him? One. Giant. Bruise.
“If you think I’m training with you anytime this month, you’re out of your tiny mind,” I tell him. Bastard. I didn’t come beating the crap out of him when he was laid up, did I? No. I limited myself to mild shoving.
“Hey, if you want to be fat and lazy, that’s your business,” he says with a superior little smirk. “I’ll just let you rot there.”
“That’s not going to work,” I say.
“Okay! Okay. I’m just saying, you know, Maka’s gonna want to get out to the field as soon as possible, and if you’re still lazy-ass? I’m just saying, she might go off alone and get all messed up. You know what she’s like about duty and honor and whatever. But if you want to rest up more, I totally underst-”
“I hate you, Black Star. I hate you and I’ve always hated you,” I tell him, kicking back the covers and crawling out of bed. I’m ridiculously weak; I just about pitch into Black Star while I’m trying to stand up. He cackles at me.
Tsubaki is too well-mannered to actually laugh in my face, but I know she’s doing it on the inside.
Damn it. Stupidity shouldn’t be contagious; that doesn’t seem fair. Genius isn’t contagious, or I would have gotten it from Maka by now. The whole world is cockeyed.
* * *
Unsurprisingly, I’m back in the infirmary with about a hundred extra bruises less than half an hour later. I tried to snipe at Black Star about it, but he said, “What? You feel less worthless now, don’t you?”
And he’s right, the jerk. I guess it was worth it. Even though Maka yelled at me for half an hour because I went off training with Black Star instead of waiting for Nygus-sensei to check me over. And then she said I had to stay in the infirmary one more night or she’d kill me herself.
It’s just as well. I wanted one more night in the infirmary anyway.
I’ve been waiting for the dead of night to do this. Not the kind of thing I want any witnesses for, which is another reason it’s better I’m not at home. I mean, what if he just kills me or something? I don’t want Maka seeing that.
42-42-564. Death and murder.
“Soul!” he says, voice surprised. “It’s awfully late, isn’t it? Shouldn’t you be resting?”
He sounds exactly like someone who cares. The question is, how put on is that?
“Sorry to bother you so late, Shinigami-sama,” I say. “I just had something to ask.”
“Ask away, ask away!”
“What’s your goal with all this? Shibusen, I mean. The Children's Crusade. Us.”
There’s nothing quite as awkward as sharing a long, ominous silence with a guy in a smiley death-head mask. In case you were wondering.
“Why do you ask?” This is not the friendly Shinigami voice at all.
I’m putting my cards on the table, though. If you don’t trust the guy you work for, you shouldn’t be working for him. I need to know if I should be working for this guy or not.
“I ask because you brought that book here, and I have to think you knew what would happen. Because the Kishin looks kind of like Kid’s older brother, and I gotta say that worries me. Because there’s only one book on Eibon in our whole huge library, even though he’s big news. It’s shady.”
Silence. Then he says again, “Why do you ask?”
What the hell, I told him the truth and he doesn’t like it? Too complicated for him or something?
“I ask because I don’t trust you to keep Maka safe,” I say. There. That’s practically words of one syllable. I dare him to have a problem with that.
“I’ll keep all the students safe,” he says. Pretty lousy answer.
“Make me believe you,” I tell him. “Preferably not by magically fucking with my head.”
The mask tips back and he starts to laugh. I’ve got this funny feeling he’s not taking me too seriously. People have been laughing at me ever since I came to; what’s that about?
“I’m not sure what you want me to tell you, Soul,” he says after a good long while, still chuckling. “What do you want from me? Proof?”
“What do people ever want from their God?” I ask. “I want to believe you have a plan. I want to believe it’s a good one, or at least one that won’t get everyone I love killed.”
“I’ll tell you everything once you’ve become my Death Scythe.”
“Pay attention to what’s going on around you, will you?” It’s got to be a bad idea to get impatient with a shinigami, but what the hell. I’ve done it before. “I’m never gonna be your Death Scythe. I’m owned. I might as well have Property of Maka Albarn tattooed on my neck.”
“I thought you did,” he says.
I clap my hand over the bite on reflex, then realize the bastard’s laughing at me. Again.
I start to get irritated, then remind myself (must have reminded myself a hundred times by now) that anybody’d have a weird sense of humor after being alive all those centuries. Alone.
So, fine. We’ll just start over. I got all night.
“Did you leave Kid in that book on purpose?”
“No.”
“Did you let me get sucked into that book on purpose?”
“I didn’t know it would be you.”
“You didn’t know it would be me, but you knew it would be someone?”
“I expected Noah to try to catch someone.”
“Uh huh.” More information than I thought I’d get from him, actually. “So what was the plan with that?”
“I needed to see if someone could break free of the book.”
I could ask him why, but…I don’t think I want to know. “And I didn’t get free.”
“No. But the damage to your soul was surprisingly minimal.”
“Surprisingly, huh?” That’s just great. “What would have happened if it had been surprisingly bad?”
“I would have pulled you out before it became irreparable.”
Great. So he knew how to pull me out all along. That’s not creepy at all. “So it was a big experiment. Were you worried?”
“Sick,” he says, and with all this conviction. Either he’s serious, or he’s a damn good actor. And if he’s that good an actor, I’d almost be willing to follow him just out of respect for that.
But not quite.
“You sent Maka in there after me. For your experiment.”
“Maka is more important to you than your own life, but as far as I’m concerned, you’re equally important.”
“Which is to say, neither one as important as your experiments.”
“Correct.”
…Whoa. Brutal honesty, who saw that coming? But it’s easier to trust than the Friendly Shinigami look.
So, okay. It wasn’t like he meant to let us die for the experiment, but he probably wouldn’t have cried any tears if we had. Then again, he’s meant to be saving the world, right? That’s bigger than us. I guess I like that he said as much.
Or did he say it like that because he knows I find people easier to believe when they’re telling me awful things? He’s been around a long time. Had a long time to figure out what people want to hear.
I could run myself in circles like this all night, couldn’t I?
Eight hundred years the guy’s spent on Shibusen, and it was a little paradise for us until the shit hit the fan. Sure, we went off into possible death every day, but we did that to ourselves, and we probably would have done it even if it hadn’t been for Shibusen. We’re all a little wild; look at Liz and Patty. Shinigami-sama did a pretty good job of training us not to get ourselves killed.
I’d still feel better if I knew what he’d gotten up to in the old days. If I knew what he was up to now. If I knew what the deal with the Kishin was.
You have to trust people sometimes. But you don’t have to trust them all that much. I’m glad we had this talk; it gets me back to Plan A, which was to hang around until he messed with Maka, and then run. It looks like he’s not after us in particular, and that’s good enough to be going on with.
“So you have a plan,” I say, just to review.
“I have a plan.”
“And you think it’s a good plan.”
“I think it’s the best plan possible under the circumstances.”
Huh. Ringing endorsement there. “And this plan, it’s not supposed to get Maka killed.”
“From now on, the plan should bring no additional risk to Maka.”
“Additional?” Should?
“Being a technician is a fairly high-risk profession, Soul.”
True.
“I guess that’ll have to do, then.” I stand up and put my hands in my pockets, and it’s only then that it hits me what I’ve done.
Holy shit, I grilled Shinigami-sama. Maybe I’m more insanity-infected than I realized.
“It’s been a few years since anyone asked me so many questions,” Shinigami-sama says. He’s back to sounding like he thinks it’s all fun and games, but that’s cool. In the scheme of things, I’m sure it is. For him.
“Yeah? Who did it last time?”
“Maka’s mother, in fact,” he says. “Interestingly enough, she was also concerned for Maka’s safety. Anyone would think I’d threatened the girl.”
The mirror clouds over, and it’s just a mirror again.
It’s not that he’s threatened her; it’s not even that I think he doesn’t care about her. It’s just that she’s going to be amazing, and that’ll attract attention. Bad attention. Anybody can see that. And it scares the hell out of the people who love her.
* * *
The downside to staying in the infirmary another night turns out to be that everybody and their brother wants to see if I’m really awake the next morning, and Maka’s not around to keep them away.
“Hey, Sid-sensei.” Sid-sensei is the tenth one since I woke up, and I don’t even want to think how many people were in here staring at me while I was asleep. “Thanks for pulling me out of the book.”
“I’d never leave a comrade in peril. That’s the kind of man I was!”
Good thing he doesn’t realize what Shinigami-sama was up to. He’d probably blow up Shibusen. That’s the kind of man he was.
“Nygus tells me your soul’s back to normal,” he says. “Or as normal as you get.”
“Thanks.” Everybody’s a comedian. “Why is that, anyway? It got fixed up when you pulled me out of the book?”
“Well, in part,” he says, going into teacher-mode. “The rest got fixed when you slept for three days, which is why you did it. But you were in surprisingly good shape even when we found you.” Yeah. I keep hearing that. “We expected much more decay. Maka must have helped you out more than we thought she could. You’ve got a pretty amazing technician, eh, Soul?”
Yes. I have.
Sid-sensei’s giving me a dubious look all of a sudden. Dubious looks don’t go well on zombie faces. I wish he’d stop.
“What’s with that scarf, Soul?” he asks. “It’s awful.”
Kid (first visitor of the morning) replaced my scarf. This one’s a nice, symmetrical plaid. I’m not in a position to argue about his taste.
“I don’t ask you about the tattoos, Sid-sensei, and you don’t ask me about the scarf. Fair enough?”
“My tattoos are awesome, kid.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“In what way are my tattoos not awesome?”
“‘Death,’” I tell him. “Really subtle. And what’s with the lines? You dropped death in a pond?”
“It’s not supposed to be subtle, idiot,” he snaps. He’s getting surprisingly worked up over this. “It’s supposed to be terrifying! The lines are death, spreading out and touching everything!”
“Alright, sure,” I agree. It’s too late to argue about it, anyway. Tattoos are pretty permanent even before you die.
He scowls. “Think sharpened teeth are subtle, do you?”
“I was born with them.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Grr.”
The door opens before this conversation can get any more stupid. Probably just as well.
It’s Maka’s dirty old dad. Seriously, Maka’s dad came to see me?
“Spirit!” Sid-sensei looks about as surprised as I feel. “You come to visit the kid?”
Maka’s dad smiles at him, but there’s something off about it. Not his usual skeezy smile; it’s sharper than that. Normally it’s hard to believe he and Maka are even related, but something about that smile…yeah, you can see he’s her dad.
It’s weird.
“Sid,” he says. “Yeah, I thought I’d check up on him. I’m winning my way to Maka’s heart by checking on her partner! It’s a brilliant plan!”
Sid-sensei gives him a pitying look. “Good luck with that,” he says. “And you, kid.” He glares at me. “Shape up.”
All because I don’t like his tattoos. Harsh.
Once he’s gone, Maka’s dad comes over and studies me. The goofy, talking-about-Maka look is gone, and he’s being serious. Don’t think I’ve ever seen him serious.
…Don’t think we’ve ever been alone together before. It’s making me nervous. Which is crazy, it’s crazy being nervous about Maka’s dad. Right?
“Soul Eater,” he says. “Shinigami-sama is irritated with you.”
Oh, shit.
“He doesn’t know that I know why, of course. But it’s hard to hide things from your weapon, shinigami or not. It’s much easier to hide things from your technician. But you know all about that, don’t you?”
This is creepy. It’s creepy, and I don’t like where it’s going. “There’s not much that I hide from Maka,” I say. Is he pissed that I was worried about her? What the hell, he’s her dad, isn’t he? He’s never shown signs of following the Medusa model of parenting before.
“I’m glad to hear it,” he says with a crazy-dad gleam in his eye. I kind of find the crazy-dad gleam comforting; at least it’s normal. “But that’s not my point. My point is that if there’s information I want from Shinigami-sama, it’s easy for me to get it. Whereas it’s hard for him to get anything from me.”
“Uh, okay.” I’m none the wiser.
He rolls his eyes. “I’m saying I’m very well-positioned to protect Maka from him, if that needs to be done,” he says. “Or to encourage him to protect Maka, if he doesn’t seem willing. My wife made sure I would be. Don’t worry so much, Soul Eater.”
I realize that the mouth-hanging-open look is not a cool one, but there’s nothing I can do about it.
Maka’s dad smirks at me. “You remind me of Stein, sometimes,” he says.
From anybody else, that’d be a deadly insult. Coming from him? I have no freaking idea what it’s supposed to mean. So it fits in nicely with the rest of the conversation.
“Oh, and if you hurt Maka, I’ll kill you.”
Oh good. Something I know how to respond to. “I thought that was a given.”
“Of course it is.” He beams at me. “And yet I never get tired of saying it.”
* * *
“Um.” Maka twists her hands in her skirt. “I’m. Sorry. That I. Uh.”
“Bit me?” I suggest. I’m just trying to be helpful; this might take all day otherwise.
She looks like she might keel over from embarrassment, and that skirt is never going to be the same.
“Bit you,” she whispers. “Oh, God.”
Man. I’d love to tease the hell out of her about it (because it hurt), but, damn. I gotta take pity on that face.
“S’okay, Maka.” I reach out and start untangling the fingers from the skirt. “Check it out, Kid gave me a scarf to hide it.”
“Kid knows?”
Hah, she has never sounded this mortified.
“Kid says he’s shocked you didn’t get both sides; how could you?”
She gives a little despairing wail and hides her face in her hands. I try to tug her hands down, but she’s determined.
“We’ll just tell him you were tired. You were completely loopy and out of it. Otherwise your mind would totally have been on symmetry, right?”
A choked giggle comes from behind the hands.
“C’mon, let’s get me out of here. I’m ready to go home. You can make it up to me if you keep Sid-sensei away.”
She peeks through her fingers. “What did you do to Sid-sensei?”
“I like how you assume it was something I did.”
“It was, wasn’t it?”
“Well. Yeah.”
“What happened, Soul?”
“Bite marks, Maka.”
The fingers close.
Okay. So, on the upside, that’s really effective for getting her to stop asking questions. On the downside, I’ll never see her face again.
“Maka, you gotta stop that. Nobody knows but Kid, and he has weird priorities.”
“You know,” she says.
“Yeah, and I already forgave you. Something about that one time a couple of days ago when you kept my soul from being eaten, I don’t know. And even if you hadn’t, hell. You kissed me. I’d put up with a lot for that.”
The hands drop.
“You weren’t just putting up with me kissing you?” she asks blankly.
And to think her dad is the biggest slut in Shibusen (barring Blaire). Like I say, it’s usually hard to believe they’re related. “Maka, I practically pulled you down on top of me.”
“Oh, yeah.” She sounds weirdly dazed. “Thought I’d dreamt that part.”
I close my eyes. My partner. So smart to be such an idiot.
“Soul.” I open my eyes just in time for her to kiss me again. And what was the point of that, because you just close your eyes again, right, with someone so close to your face, you…
Kissing. Possibly better than advertised.
She pulls back and tries to pretend she isn’t bright red. “There,” she says. “I definitely remember that one.”
“Good.” I clear my throat. “Wouldn’t want you confused. Can we check me out now?”
“No,” she says.
“No?”
“I have to tell you what I came here to tell you. You keep distracting me.”
Somehow, I don’t have it in me to feel bad about that.
“It’s about Angela.”
Angela, you’re such a mood-killer.
“She’s missing.”
I wait for her to say something else. Not sure what, just, you know. Anything would do. But no, that’s it. “You mean she’s not in her room?”
“She’s not in Shibusen. Kim is afraid Medusa abducted her.”
Oh, come on. Not again.
“I think she might just have run off. After all, we are the ones who killed Mifune. If she found out, she’d have no reason to trust us.”
“Yeah. I wouldn’t trust us. That’s why nobody told her, unless Black Star-”
“He says he didn’t. Shinigami-sama wants us to look for her as soon as you’re up to it.”
“Why us?” Angela hates me. To say nothing of what I think of Angela.
“We’ll be joining Kim and Jackie. Everyone else is leaving tomorrow to look for Noah or Justin or the Kishin, and if you weren’t injured, we would be, too,” Maka says, all business.
“Justin?” I ask blankly.
“Justin turned out to be evil. You slept through a busy month,” Maka says, weirdly blasé. “We’re stretched thin. There’s no one else to look.”
Right. So in the last month, I almost got both our souls eaten, Justin turned evil, I pissed off Sid-sensei and Shinigami-sama, Maka’s dad scared the hell out of me, and we completely lost track of Angela. Whom we now have to find. This is not a stellar record.
“Let’s run away and join the circus,” I suggest.
“Soul!”
Right. It was worth a try.
Part 1