24Hello everyone and welcome to the first chapter of Resonant Evolution! we'd like to thank you for joining us and respect the fact that neither Reinforce Eins or Thespurgin own Harry Potter or Soul Eater, we're just mixing the two together.
And now, the finished version of Chapter One: Circus Memories
The Moon was laughing again; laughing as if it knew something no-one else did.
Which it probably did, considered Harry from his reclining position against a rooftop. Above him hung the offending celestial body; a crescent of yellow cratered faintly with the pockmarks of impacts from the abyss of space, save the vast black pit of a crater in which the moon's dilated, pupil-less eye rested and the leering expanse of flawless white teeth upon it, ever stretched in a disconcerting cheshire grin as it gazed with a lidless eye upon those below, snickering at the futility of their lives, the daily routine, and general idiocy of homo sapiens.
Must be one of the privileges of being so far above everyone, being able to mock them openly like that. No one could really make you stop if you were miles out of reach. Then again, the non-magicals had managed to reach the moon at one point in the past. Harry remembered as much from his time in primary school, before his admittance into the the DWMA.
In what few memories of the Dursleys (and they were VERY few) Harry could bear to dredge out of his memory and go over in fine detail; memories of his time back before he had been saved from a fate worse than death only to be introduced to him barely a week later, he hadn't been able see the moon's true face either.
It was aggravating, but Harry had to admit that as annoying as the Moon's laughter could be, he'd grown accustomed to it. It was hardly something that affected his sleeping habits anymore, whatever it might have done to them in the past. Nowadays, it only kept him up if it was particularly obnoxious. It's standard mocking sniggers of superiority practically lulled him to sleep these days. Seeing it up there, so different from his memories of the Dursleys, was reassuring at times, the final death knell of his deep-seated fear that someday he would go back to those horrible people who treated him like an animal, that these past five years have all been just a dream.
It'd been five years since that fateful day. Five years since he'd been rescued from the monster (though he now knew it to be a pre-kishin) by the man who would become his adoptive father, Spirit Albarn. He still remembered it vividly. The trip they'd gone on to celebrate Dudley's birthday had been to a great circus that had been in the area. He could still remember the pains in his legs from when Aunt Marge rapped his shins to keep him from beating Dudley at musical chairs earlier that day.
The circus excursion had been something Vernon and Petunia had only barely acquiesced to after Marge pointed out that everyone who was anyone watched a circus performance at least once in their lives, and that it might be amusing for Harry (though they'd only called him the boy) to see the fate of other freaks.
Harry hadn't expected to have much of a chance for fun at the circus himself, even as a five-year old child able to discern that the dursleys were watching him. It was confirmed for his young mind with the visit to the freakshow being used as a chance by all members of the family to stamp into him what a freak he was. The rest of the time, he was either being hounded by Dudley (when he wasn't tearing around and taking in all the sights), or remained as compliant to the elder trio of Dursleys to avoid repercussions when the night ended.
Even so, the circus was amazing. The air, the taste, the sheer difference of everything from the tiny plot of land between Privet Drive and St. Gregory's Primary School that was practically all he'd ever known to that day were so rich and active, it was like an infusion of life to him.
In spite of everything, he'd managed to find some level of excitement and happiness from the visit to the circus, soaking it in like a sponge. It was his glimpse of the world beyond Privet Drive, the first taste of something different from all the abuse. Alas, with such a strong, pivotal memory, he remembered all too vividly when that all turned from a dream to a nightmare.
They'd entered the big top for the final show of the evening, and it was as fantastic as Harry expected it to be. Then came the act with the lion tamer. He could see the scene even now as if it had been burned into his neurons. The tamer had come out into the caged show area first, clad in a vest and trousers lined with thick fur and naught but a whip in his hands. He'd spoken in a grand manner, and the circus master did as well — something about a man pitting himself against nature's most ferocious predators — before waving to the far side of the arena, where a huge, iron-barred cage door lay fringed by ominous curtains, beyond which lay absolute blackness.
Harry felt it before the others, the wrongness emanating from that cage. He remembered tensing up and shrinking into his chair, which only led to Dudley mocking him. Idiot warthog, he should have been running.
Harry never had a chance to say as much, since that had been when those dark iron bars had lifted, leaving nothing between that terrible darkness and the arena. For a moment, no one had said anything. Harry had been desperate to get out of that room, quivering in place, but no one else noticed. Everyone save him had been entranced with that open door, waiting with baited breath for the great feline to come charging out. Well, something had come out alright.
It had begun with the soft clanking of a chain, then footsteps — not the sound of an animal's, they were far too loud to be that — as something slowly emerged from those horrible shadows. The sound of something dripping seemed impossibly loud in the unnaturally quiet tent, and perhaps that is what tipped off some of the other people in the audience, not that it made that much of a difference.
Harry remembered the horrified cries as that thing, that monstrous horror stalked into the light. It was an affrontery to the eyes and to something even deeper inside the soul, an entity whose very presence pushed the subconscious, animal part of the human mind into a panic.
It had the figure of a man, perhaps it even was human once, but not anymore.
At first glance, it's motions seemed mesmerizingly beautiful. Many in the audience seemed hypnotized by the indistinct outline's approach, in vain, for they should have escaped while they still could... For as the flickering circus lights revealed the thing's true nature, most everyone found themselves frozen in their seats or choking horrified gasps down, for fear of drawing it's attention. Amongst the stands, people could be heard desperately praying to whatever deities they honored (and some they didn't) that it wouldn't notice them.
In one hand, the abomination held the source of the dripping sound: the severed, still bleeding head of a lion torn free of the once majestic beast's body barehanded, as was evident from the tattered remnants of the once-alpha predator's spinal column trailing along the ground, painting the dirt in callous brushstrokes.
Claws, dirty and cracked things dripping in the fleshy detritus and blood that seemed as if it had been deliberately used as paint, protruded from torn white gloves, the hands beneath them gnarled and muscular. It's fingers in particular were perhaps the most disturbing, for they were easily twice the length of any regular human's and had far too many joints, resembling more along the lines of knotted fleshy ropes than anything human. On it's feet, impossibly large shoes reminiscent of a clown's, yet pointed at the tips in a way no clown's would ever be sat, and it's body was covered in the tattered remains of a gaudy clownsuit in places visibly shredded — most likely by the claw-like nails of the abomination — to reveal the off-color black and white bars of a prison uniform stained reddish brown with a zipper down the front. Ropes crisscrossed the figure, often twined around the limbs and torso so tightly it seemed impossible for the thing to even breath let alone move, but in blatant disregard for such facts it seemed to practically stalk around with a flexibility more akin to a cartoon than a human being.
It's head, however, was the most appalling thing. Misshapen and bulbous, it had a chin practically equal to the rest of it's body in size. The nose, cherry-red like a clown's in in a way that seemed morbidly ironic, sat like a tomato in the middle of the abomination's face. Red and white hued skin that seemed all too much like brushed facepaint decorated it's face, stretching the bowl-evacuating grin of the monstrous figure to proportions that would make the Cheshire Cat green with envy.
To call the anathema to all sense and decency an "evil clown" just didn't do it justice.
Harry remembered that long moment of silence as that horrible thing paused just after the raised door of the cage, the way it cocked it's head as if regarding the vast buffet before it, waiting for something to move and make itself prey.
No one moved, either too scared to contemplate the hellish apparition before them or possibly believing it to be some horrific shared nightmare. The scent of human excrement, pungent and acrid even in the stained air of the circus tent. In that instant everything froze, crystallized in Harry's memory. A scene of nightmares.
That very moment shattered like glass as the clown-shaped monster discarded the severed lion's head and lashed out, pouncing on the hapless beastmaster and coiling it's wicked phalanges around his neck. The beastmaster's choked cry broke the seeming trance of the audience, inciting a torrent of screams and bodies piling over each other to reach the exits. Harry felt himself crushed into his seat as Dudley dragged his porcine bulk over Harry, but he could only see the monster's hands coiling around the beastmaster's throat, squeezing and squeezing… The man desperately kicked and lashed, trying to free himself. Harry couldn't move; he couldn't breath. In his head, he'd screamed for someone, anyone, to help the man!
But no one saved the man. He could never forget the sickening gurgle as the beastmaster's throat collapsed and he ran out of air, going limp like one of the ragdolls he'd seen the girls carry in preschool. The circus master was already fleeing towards the door connecting the caged arena and the stands. The Dursleys were still attempting to run (or in the case of Vernon and Dudley, waddle) through the seats to the stairs. Harry knew he should be fleeing, but his eyes couldn't move from the body of the murdered circus performer. As such, he was the only one to watch it contort in on itself and congeal into a floating sphere of blue-white light, a tongue of the same wafting off of it like a single flame from a gas burner.
He couldn't turn away either when the horrible monster coiled it's fingers around that beautiful blue light, licked its lips, and swallowed it whole. The revulsion and disgust that had flooded Harry's whole body at that sight, enough to nearly make him lose what meager sustenance the Dursleys had allowed him prior to Dudley's party earlier that day, was also enough to break him from his trance. Harry shot to his feet and scrambled over the seats, ignoring the bruises and nicks on his shins from Marge's willow withe, only for his eyes to catch sight of the monster turning to look at something.
As if unconsciously, he realized where it was looking. "The door!" he heard someone cry, only to realize it was him. The monster spun towards the sound of his voice, and for an instant he peered straight into the eyes of the horrific apparition. He saw in those eyes what it wanted, what it was after, and what it would do.
It was going to kill him. It would do horrible things to him first. Things that redoubled his momentarily ignored horror and revulsion. If he even survived them, it would strangle him until his feeble kicks subsided, savoring every moment of his screams. Then it would eat him whole. Oh god it was going to kill him. It was going to kill them all. Why him!? He was just a worthless freak! Everyone knew it!
'It didn't matter though.' He thought. Even if he was a freak, this thing was worse. He wasn't going to just let it kill him too.
He tore after the Dursleys, watching in the corner of his eyes as the monster slammed into the unlocked door into the stands and clamping his horrible fingers down on the circus master. He hadn't seen any further, having reached the tunnel between the stands that led out of the tent, but he heard the fleshy crunch of a neck snapping like kindling.
The stampede of people ahead of him seemed endless, but even so he ran as fast as he could, barely keeping pace with them. The monster wouldn't stop. He had to run!
They were outside the tent now. The circus grounds were in total chaos, entire stands collapsed and at least one fire burned amongst the devastated stands and exhibitions. The sounds of screaming people echoing into the evening sky around them. He didn't care. He just wanted to get away from that terrible thing in that tent.
Alas, the Dursleys were amongst the slowest of the people fleeing the tent, and so remained on the tail-end of the stampede ahead. Soon they were falling farther and farther behind. The unearthly sound of the clown monster's laughter sounded behind them, and Harry glanced over his shoulder only to see it charging after them, it's eyes locked on his back. It was gaining.
The rest of the Dursleys began to slow, their own physical inactivity costing them dearly as they simply ran out of energy. Somehow, Dudley and Petunia became the front runners with Vernon in the middle and Marge slowly falling behind to run neck and neck with Harry.
The laugh sounded again, closer now. Aunt Marge glanced over her shoulder to see how close it was, and tripped over an electrical cable lifted partially off the ground by the stampede of people ahead of them. She went down, a sharp cry escaping her mouth as she struck dirt, almost taking Harry with her.
The monster was on her before she could scream. Harry heard another fleshy snap, and knew that Aunt Marge was dead.
He kept running, ignoring the flash of blue-white behind him and following the Dursleys down a side alley between two columns of stalls, then past the ferris wheel and across the now abandoned food court. The laughter of the clown monster could be heard a ways off, likely stalking them.
The Dursleys frantically slipped between another alley behind the food stalls, and paused to catch a breath. Harry came up last, gasping and quivering on his hands and knees for any kind of air. He couldn't think about anything but that horrible snapping sound, the sound of Aunt Marge's neck snapping like a twig and the sound of the monster's laugh. What unholy thing was that monster? Dudley quivered in Petunia's arms, begging her to save him from the boogeyman that was chasing them. Vernon though… Vernon spun on him. Harry felt a sharp pain on the side of his face before he sprawled backwards, the force of the blow from Vernon's hand splitting his skin where the man's wedding ring tore across his face.
"Freak! It's after you isn't it? Think if we give you to it it'll let us go?"
"Vernon you can't be serious! That thing was killing anyone it could get it's hands on!" Pentunia gasped. "Handing the freak over to it will only make it wait for us until it's done with the boy! Besides, you know what they might do to us if we did that!"
A sinister glint appeared in the walrus-sized man's in his eye. "You're right my dear. Take Dudley and run for the gate! I'll help the boy and be right behind you."
A nod from Petunia, and the two fled. The instant they disappeared around the corner though, Vernon lunged, clamping his humongous hand down on Harry with a wild look in his eye.
"Yes, they might be upset about this if they found out, but my family is more important than a single freak child. This is your fault. Your freakishness drew that thing to you, and now my sister is dead! Useless. Freakish. Boy. Well, I'm going to make sure you do at least one useful thing before you die, if it has to be distracting that monster for us to escape then so be it!"
Spittle flew from the half-raving man's mouth as he hissed viciously at Harry, eying him for a moment before rising and bringing his elephantine foot down on his ankle, eliciting a sharp cry from Harry that only led to his uncle hefting him up by the ragged collar of his oversized clothes and bashing him against the stand, which partially collapsed the tented structure and dazed the boy. His sinister act of desperation and betrayal complete, Vernon Dursley fled after his wife and son, leaving Harry surrounded by shattered glass jars of kettlecorn and the remains of the shelves they rested on.
It was several minutes before Harry recovered fully, still half buried under the shelves, glass, and kettlecorn from the barely standing tent. The the moment he did, he gave voice to a soft sob. It was true. He was useless, a freak. The monster wanted him, and it'd killed Marge because she was in between the monster and him. His parents were drunks that died in a car accident. His own uncle hurt his leg and left him behind to be food for the monster. No one loved him after all.
Harry's despaired musings were interrupted by the sound of that monster's hideous laugh, so terribly close to him. He jerked up to look, and cried out in agony. His leg! The leg Uncle Vernon had stepped on! He couldn't move it! Looking down, he realized that not only was the leg buried under a shelf far too heavy for him to lift, but even if it was free he could feel the a flash of agony lance up his leg. Was it sprained? Broken?
He couldn't move. He couldn't run. He was dead. The monster would find him and eat him, and he'd die as he lived: with nothing. Maybe the world was better off without a freak like him in it… but why? Why did it have to be him? He'd never hurt anyone or been cruel. He'd only ever wanted to be loved. He'd only ever wanted a family.
With no where else to look, Harry stared up at the moon, which shone down on him with the same radiance as the rest of the world. Suddenly, he didn't feel so alone anymore. His little heart hardened. So he was going to die. So what? He didn't have much to return to if he survived, just beatings and starvation and apathy. If the God the Dursleys always talked about when they came home from Church on sundays was real, at least he'd accept him in the afterlife. There he'd be loved.
If he was going to die, then at least he wouldn't die crying and screaming. He'd stare it down to the very end. He wasn't afraid of that monster. He had nothing to lose.
A shadow cut the moonlight, and Harry looked up again. The monster. It came down from the sky, leaping an entire column of stands to land across the way from him, crouched like a monstrous cat. He felt his resolve waver, but set his teeth and glared silently back at the leering abomination.
It came forward slowly, licking it's lips. Harry matched it's gaze, even when it's horrible ropey fingers tightened around his neck and hoisted him off the ground. He couldn't breath. Black started to encroach on his vision. Even still he stared into the merciless eyes of the monster. He didn't kick, he didn't writhe. It would have made no difference and he hadn't the energy anyway. He just devoted everything he had to that stare.
The monster's voice, this time in the form of a chuckle, flooded his ears and he shuddered involuntarily. The monster reached with it's free hand for the zipper on it's prisonsuit — Perhaps to pull out a weapon? Why would it need one? — and for a horrible moment Harry wondered what more it could possibly have planned for him.
Thankfully, he would never have to find out first hand. Before the heinous apparition could so much as grasp the metal tie, the half collapsed stand behind Harry erupted, and the monster screamed as something hit it. The monster reeled back from the blow, dropping Harry to the hard packed earth. As the blackness began to recede from his vision, Harry forced his up to look at the monster again… only to find that he and the abomination were no longer alone.
The clown monster was crouched down against the stand across the dirt street, clasping it's revolting hand about its other arm, which hung limply by only a strip of whatever it was the thing was made out of. There was no blood, it simply hung there. Standing between him and the monster, however, stood what could only be his savior.
His hair was burgundy. That was the first thing Harry could define of him. A black casual suit and shoes left him somehow connecting the figure before him with a respectable businessman, but the final thing to catch his eyes made no sense.
How did that guy have a large metal blade growing out of his arm?
"John Wayne Gacy, otherwise known as Pogo the Clown." the figure stated. His voice was solemn; deadpan. It was enough to give him chills. "Congratulations, as a result of your soul's corruption, you've devolved from a man into a kishin-egg. Your sin of consuming the souls of innocents has gotten you added to Lord Death's list, and all such abominations are to be terminated. For your crimes as a human and as you are now, you will face judgement, and I am your judge, jury, and executioner. By the order of Lord Death, your Soul is mine!"
The monster answered with a snarled shriek, then launched into what Harry could only assume was a rant of some kind (probably one with a lot of dirty words), incomprehensible as it was to him. He didn't care. In that moment, all he could see was that red-haired man. He must be a freak. What kind of man had a metal blade growing out of his arm?
Strangely enough, his rescuer's obvious freakishness only brought Harry some strange comfort.
His uncle and aunt and their family, for Vernon's parting words had made it painfully clear that he was not a part of that family, had always called him a freak, and now in his dying moments another freak had saved his life. Why?
"W-who are you?" he whispered, gazing incomprehensibly at the man. "Why fight that monster for me? I'm worthless. Just a freak..."
The man glanced over his shoulder, keeping one eye on the ranting monster before him, and frowned. "The name's Spirit Albarn kid, and short version? It's my job. That being said you're wrong; I saw enough just now to see that you're anything but worthless. Just a child, but you managed to survive a pre-kishin hunting you specifically? I can't name more than a half-dozen people capable of that, so you're definitely not worthless. As for being a freak..." his eyes softened just a bit. "You're no more a freak than my little daughter Maka is. Rest. I'll deal with this guy then we'll see about getting you home okay?"
"Okay...", he managed as the blackness swam around his vision. Then the monster charged, and the man charged to face it head on, blades sprouting in flashes of light from his arms and back. They swung at each other, abominable ropey fingers and unnatural metal blades sweeping across the space to meet flesh. The sound of—
"Harry!"
"Whowhatwherewhenwhyhow!?"
Said Harry jerked up, clamping down hard on an adjacent chimney pipe to prevent himself from sliding clean off the 3rd story roof.
"Death's almighty chop Maka!" He snapped, glaring at the open window a short ways up the roof. "Don't do that! What if I fell?"
The pale blonde's eyebrow rose, highlighting her pupiless avocado green eyes, an attribute displaying her unnaturally strong soul perception abilities. While the unusual blankness of those eyes had at times been disturbing to some, Harry felt perfectly at home with them. Granted this was doubtlessly in no small part on account of the fact that he'd spent the last five years as the closest thing to a sibling she had, but to him it was more than their shared eyes.
Harry wasn't born with the same kind of eyes as Maka. For one, he still had pictures of what he looked like when Spirit first brought him to Death City, and for another… it's hard to forget the first time you see souls manifested in your vision. Rather, Harry's possession of the soul perception ability Maka counted amongst her gifts was thanks to a complicated metaphysical condition he'd contracted soon after arriving in Death City. While most might have found her eyes unnatural, to him they were precious ties between the two of them. They marked the two of them as family.
"Harry," she replied with a dismissive snort "we both know that you regularly jump from high roofs for the heck of it. Besides, if you were out of it enough to totally miss my distinctly unstealthy approach and fall from the roof, there's a bigger problem there than my calling you in for bed."
"I don't just jump off roofs for the heck of it." he grumbles in response, releasing the chimney pipe to go back to gazing upwards into the night sky. "It's three dimensional mobility training. kishin eggs don't move like humans, so we have to be able to match them move for move regardless of where we end up fighting them be it on rooftops or bridges, in sewers or marshes, or in catacombs or graveyards."
"Yeah I know." she said, slipping out to join him on the rooftop. "That's no justification for letting your guard down that badly though."
Harry curled up, staring at the roof shingles under his shoes. "I know."
Maka, sensing her raven-haired companion's turmoil as only a sister can, frowned. "Okay Harry, what's wrong."
"It's nothing Maka, I'm fine."
She frowned. "Harry…"
Harry winced. He knew that tone of voice, and he knew that when she brought it out, he didn't stand a chance of keeping his secrets. One way or another she'd find out, often by weaseling it out of him. More disturbing was when he didn't spill and she still figured it out. Five years, and he still didn't know how she did that. A bookworm Maka Albarn may be, but Harry'd be damned if she wasn't a ridiculously good detective too. Even so, he had to make one last attempt to deny her accusations.
"Seriously Maka, it's nothing."
"It's because of the anniversary isn't it?" she asked softly.
Harry tried not to flinch, he really did. It must not have been enough though, since Maka's eyes softened slightly.
Knowing he'd been found out, Harry sighed. "Yeah, it's because of the anniversary." He admitted, slumping back on his elbows with his eyes turned to the midnight sky again. "I don't know Maka, no matter what I do I can't shake the feeling I could have done more. Even as I was, I could have— "
"Done what, Harry?" She asked of him softly. "Died horribly and bought your Death-accursed abusive relatives a few more seconds?"
"I could have fought it! I could have drawn it off! I could have done something."
"You were malnourished, in shock, injured, and barely able to keep up with the Dursleys let alone fight or outrun that thing, and the object of that thing's attention for a half-dozen different reasons. How can you mourn a woman who had her bulldog chase you into a tree like a stray cat and who whipped your legs to keep you from winning at musical chairs? I don't understand how you can bring yourself to care after all these years. You're free of them Harry. Why can't you just leave it in the past where it belongs?"
"Maka, pre-kishin eat souls. You know that, I know that, anyone who's ever been to the DWMA knows that… maybe we're just desensitized to the whole thing what with the school's training and everything, but if you think about it that means that if the afterlife exists and the soul is what goes there, then when a Pre-Kishin consumes a soul someone simply ceases to exist. What they do isn't just murder and death, but they actually remove someone from existence on a spiritual level. Would you wish that kind of fate on any soul, let alone a relative?
Maka's silence was telling.
"It haunts me at night you know," he says, curling up tighter. "Sometimes I see Aunt Marge's face when I close my eyes, screaming and dying and cursing me, demanding to know why I didn't save her as her soul is ripped from her body… I wouldn't wish that on anyone, even my uncle after he broke my leg and left me for dead. No one should suffer the fate of their very soul being eaten like some kind of sick meal; no one should just cease to exist."
"I agree. That's why we've worked and trained and studied so hard, if you'll remember." Maka replied.
"But what if I'm not good enough? What if I really am just broken? What good am I… a weapon no one can wield and a meister that can't resonate?"
"You're not broken Harry. You're different, but that just means you have to face things from a different angle."
"Being different is a curse." Harry muttered. "I feel out of place. Like I don't belong..."
Maka's face fell. "Do you feel that way about Soul and I too...? Like you don't belong in the family?"
"What…? No!" Harry exclaimed, jerking up indignantly. "I wouldn't trade being an Albarn for anything Maka. You're the only real family I've ever known. I can't really remember my parents and the Dursleys… they weren't family, they were just slavemasters."
"Then stop fretting about the school and belonging. Just remember that if nothing else you have your family, and your 'unique angle' has already helped Lord Death and the rest of us in dealing with Pre Kishin and Witches more than anyone in recent history… even if most people don't know about it."
"I don't want to be a researcher, I want to fight." he hissed. "I want to slaughter those monsters and save lives, not play mad scientist like Stein."
"I'm sure you'll manage that Harry. You're stubborn like that. One day, we'll be death scythes and meisters standing vigil over the world, and making sure scum like Gacy and the rest of the pre-kishin out there can't hurt anyone. You, me, and Soul. The Reaper Trinity. We're a team."
"I suppose. It just feels like you're the only ones that do any work. I just tag along and do what I can, but I can't fight like you can. Even with all our training, I can't resonate like you guys can, and that leaves me little more than a third wheel no matter how much we've practiced otherwise."
"Harry, don't forget that you're the one who figured out how to unlock weaponblood before puberty. You're the one that even made it possible for us to fight together at all, and the discovery you made is being used in Shibusen to unlock other weaponbloods years before they normally would have, and that means more time training, which in turn means a better chance of coming home alive."
"It just feels like I'm not doing enough. I can't stand being on the sidelines or in the background while soul eating monsters roam the earth."
Maka sighed. "I know, but at the same time Death Weapons eat souls too, and meisters are nothing if not complicit, so you can say everyone in Lord Death's employ do the exact same thing as pre-kishin. Does that make us hypocrites? I don't know, but I'd like to think not. There's no rule that says we have to enjoy killing pre-kishin and the death weapons consuming their souls, but the fact is that it has to be done. A single pre-kishin is capable of unspeakable destruction if given the chance, and the only true Kishin on record nearly destroyed the world before Lord Death sealed him. The only way to kill pre-kishin for certain is to consume their soul, because by the time a mortal has transformed into one they've become something mere mortal weaponry cannot truly kill. Sure, a nuke or even a shotgun or flamethrower might kill the pre-kishin's physical form, but eventually they'd come back and probably all the stronger for it. You know that as well as I do."
"Not exactly helping me with the guilt about not helping kill the things there Maka."
Maka was silent for a moment and looked up at the moon, before turning to look at her foster brother again. "Harry… I know this isn't the first time this has happened. Every year on the anniversary of that day you torture yourself over it even though you know there was nothing else you could do but die sooner and leave the kishin egg to eat other people or escape before dad arrived."
"But even so I—"
"Harry." She said, cutting him off. "I know you blame yourself and that you make up for it by pushing yourself harder and faster than practically anyone else in the DWMA— Death! When you learned you couldn't resonate with a meister or weapon you trained with Professor Stein, the meister dad's scared of, and became the first independent weapon since Justin Law!— but blaming yourself for those deaths is is pointless. Dad avenged your aunt, but you're still carrying the guilt like the kishin egg never died! When will you stop being an idiot about this and let it go?"
Harry flinched under her admonishment, regardless of the fact that it was delivered in a low enough tone that it resembled a hiss more than anything else. It was true that he pushed himself harder than most of the other students, especially with his effective 'disability' in soul resonating with another meister or weapon.
It'd taken an intervention from Death himself to keep Stein from experimenting on him when he'd discovered Harry's rather unique condition, and as much as he respected his teacher and mentor, he had no intentions of being anybody's labrat, least of all Professor Franken Stein's. Some days he wondered if his decision to learn the ways of the weapon meister from the literally 'screwy professor' had been as intelligent as he'd thought. Professor Stein may have been amongst the best meisters in the history of the DWMA, but that didn't make him any more sane, or safe to be around. I mean really, the guy's soul has a screw in it! There'd always been stories about 'The Devil with the Stitched Face,' though they were more rumor than anything else, from what he'd seen.
Unbeknownst to Harry, his internal musings had been noticed by Maka, who had up to that point been waiting patiently for an answer to her question. When she recognized the thoughtful look on his face, her first response was to think he'd taken to musing over her question seriously, but as the seconds ticked by, it became obvious such an idea was merely wishful thinking on her part.
Before her anger at being ignored could fully take root though, Maka's curiosity reared it's impetuous head and left her wondering exactly what he was thinking about. Her admonishments postponed in the name of science, she leaned in to watch Harry with a concerned, questing gaze as if looking at him hard enough would reveal his secrets to her.
One would think the encompassing silence as she stared at him and grew slowly more and more annoyed in the process would have drawn his attention to her proximity, but— much to his own misfortune— the sheer amount of time he'd spent in the pigtailed blond's presence made it hard to even register her with his combat instincts if she acted normally. Granted such a subconscious laxity in his defensive awareness— even with a family member— was perhaps a rather glaring hole in his defenses, but that was hardly something a ten year old like Harry James Albarn felt worth expending the time and energy needed to fix, no matter how mature and intelligent as he may have been.
"Maka chop!"
Then again, Maka's hardbacks really hurt.
"Owww… dang it Maka why—" Harry groaned as he held his aching cranium, half-searching for a dent in his head after the introduction of Maka's newest tome to his skull. All too late he felt Maka's hands come down in a vice on his shoulders, there was no escape.
"Harry…" she snarled,
"Yes Maka?" he gulped, breaking into a cold sweat. Maka's hands tightened on his shoulders, then the whiplash began.
"You are the-most-aggravating-person it-has-ever-been-my-misfortune-to-know!"
Whatever else she may have roared at him he couldn't make out. Probably something to do with the ringing in his ears?
Belatedly, he realized the constricting grip of Maka's hands had left his shoulders, and he stiffened as those missing hands encircled his waist as she leaned against him, followed by the soft brush of her pigtail against his ear.
"Oh, Harry... I'm sorry, but you have to stop blaming yourself for their deaths; you have to." She said. Harry was frozen. Was she sobbing? "I'm not saying to stop training or anything, or to forget what happened but it— it hurts me when you do this to yourself."
"Maka..." he whispered softly, but she wasn't done.
"You're the closest thing I've ever have to a brother, you know that right? You're practically the reason I didn't think of all men as abominable untrustworthy perverts after dad's unfaithfulness drove mom away. I can't stand seeing my brother hurt himself like this. Please."
Harry was silent for a long moment. "I… okay Maka, I can't promise… but I'll try."
"Just do your best." She replied with a faint smile. "It got you this far, didn't it?"
He shrugged. "Fair enough."
"Come on, it's time for bed and you're going to need the rest. Another big day at school tomorrow."
"Alright, alright, I'm coming..." Harry mumbled, hauling himself up the incline towards the open window. "Maka?"
"Yeah bro?"
"Thanks for the talk… I guess I needed it huh?"
"Well someone has to pull your head out of your ass don't they?" She smirked. "It was my pleasure."
In the sky above, the moon just kept laughing.
There you go! Sorry that it took so long to get around to finishing this chapter instead of just leaving it as a preview. Can't say when the next chapter will be out, but we couldn't just leave you with a preview 'til the end of time. Hope you enjoy what we have, and who knows? Maybe if the response is great enough, we'll take a shot at another chapter!