Hey hey Resbang gang! I can't believe it's already been a year. Time for Round 2!

I was amazingly fortunate to have TWO amazing artists this year, SandmanCircus & guacamoletrash. In addition to their badass artistic skillz (which I will link in my profile!), they were also an amazing hype squad, fantastic betas and very patient with me during a rather ~turbulent time~. I loved our little Aladdin family. Thank you for everything!

Cheers to another Resbang with the rest of my lovely betas, filled with hilarity, memes, and... peanut discourse. skadventuretime, makapedia, professormaka, sahdah, aquabella888 and jaded_envy, I love this story as much as I do because of all of you. Thank you all. :)

As always, I am so glad you're here, and I hope you enjoy~

Tales of magic, of choices, of bittersweet deception, often begin in the simplest of ways: with a lie.

Rooted in darkness, in misplaced trust, these lies creep through the veins like poison. Those who deal in lies are said to have the blackest blood of all.

But lies are also glass. Expose a lie, and you may find yourself greeted with a beautiful, terrible, unthinkable force. Something so powerful, so destructive, that it can break through the darkness and forever change a path.

The truth.

In the bleakest, emptiest corner of the Nevada desert, a dark woman waits with a dark purpose.

.

Diamond in the Rough
One: Oh I come from a land, from a faraway place

.

Far across the desert sands, two hooded figures face the wind. Cool, dry air whips at their cloaks as they slip into the night, stars twinkling overhead in watchful silence.

One figure is shorter, and more unsure, stumbling across unfamiliar dunes. The other is disturbingly at ease - almost frighteningly so - as the smooth glide of their cloak across the sand blurs its tracks into obscurity.

"Medusa, h-how much long-" the shorter figure mumbles, physical stumbling leaking into their speech.

"Patience, Eruka," Medusa replies, a single red eye gleaming beneath the blackness of her cloak. "Don't worry. I'll send you back where you belong, once you've… assisted with what I need."

Eruka falls silent as waves of sand continue to blow past. The further they walk, the stronger the winds become, stars spinning into a grainy blur above their heads. After some time, Medusa glides to a stop, extending her hand to the side and stopping her accomplice.

"We're here."

Stooping to the ground, Medusa extends pointed nails and sinks them into the sand, claws scuttling through it like beetles as the storm continues to swell around them. As she does so, the sky clears, though the sand continues to spin around them. Suddenly, a sliver of stars appears in the sand, a reflection of the glittery black abyss that stretches overhead. With another sweep of her hand, a perfect oval reveals itself in the sand.

"A mirror?" Eruka asks. "How did you know where-"

"I can smell the stench of Death a mile away," Medusa says as she removes her hood, forked tongue slithering between her teeth. Next to her, Eruka blanches, gazing down at her with wide eyes.

"Don't worry, dear," Medusa soothes as she rises, clawed hand moving to pat her gently on the shoulder. "No harm will come to you... if you do as I say. You have my word."

Though she is practiced, there is a tiny lilt in her voice: the one that lies make.

"W-What do I have to do?" Eruka stammers.

Medusa looks back down at the mirror, eyes gleaming. "You're going to fetch something for me," she says lightly.

Bending down again, Medusa traces a series of numbers onto the face of the mirror. When she etches the final tail of the number four into the glass, the mirror sinks beneath the surface of the sand, leaving them standing in the darkness.

For several tense seconds, nothing happens. Just as Medusa starts to glance around in irritation, the earth begins to shake. Both figures fall to the ground, sand trembling on the tops of their cloaks. Out of the earth, a giant mound slowly materializes, and as the sand falls away, a mass of bone begins to poke its way to the surface. The two of them watch - one in horror, one in fascinated glee - as a massive skull appears in the sand.

As skulls go, it isn't terribly fear-inducing; in fact, its expression is almost goofy, despite the fact that it doesn't have a mouth. Instead, the strange pointed bits at the bottom of the skull have slivers of light spilling through. The light itself is almost welcoming, a beckoning golden hue, inviting weary travelers to take shelter beneath its pointed gates.

But its eyes, black and bottomless, are another story. The skull's gaze bores into the two figures, as if peering into the very depths of their souls.

"Hey! Hiya! Hello!" a voice suddenly booms, and Eruka jumps at the sound, slipping around in the sand. Medusa's face slides into a cunning smile.

"Who disturbs my slumber?!" the skull asks. Despite its choice of words, the skull doesn't seem particularly irritated about being roused - more like… cheerfully curious, if one had to put a finger on it. Eruka visibly relaxes at the greeting, though she tenses again when Medusa pulls her up to stand, nudging her forward toward the skull.

"Go on, introduce yourself," Medusa says, impatience dripping into her voice.

"Uh," Eruka says, stumbling forward, eyes fixed on the skull. "Um… nice to... meet you?" The skull stares back soundlessly. She looks back at Medusa, who glares at her, which evidently prompts her to continue. "I'm… Eruka, I own a pet shop in Death Cit-"

"It doesn't need your whole life story," Medusa says smoothly, cutting her off. Eruka blanches and falls silent. They wait for another moment while the skull stares at them, dark eyes carefully appraising its subjects.

"That sounds nice!" the skull booms, voice still teeming with kindness, but it doesn't stop Eruka from jumping again.

"I must warn you," the voice continues, more seriously now. "Only one may enter here. A sound soul that hides in the shadows. The diamond in the rough."

The skull falls silent, and Eruka turns back to Medusa.

"I kept my end of the bargain," Medusa reminds her, eyes narrowed and almost hypnotic as she stares Eruka down. "And you will keep yours."

"O-Okay…" Eruka says, turning to face the skull again, and she edges forward across the sand. The skull's entrance looms before her, light flaring beneath the pointed spikes. As she edges nearer, it's almost as through the skull is breathing, moving up and down slightly as the spikes slide in and out of the sand.

WIth a final look behind her, Eruka passes beneath the spikes, edging forward until-

"Whoops, I don't think you're the one I'm looking for!" the skull announces with far too much mirth, given the circumstances. Its eyes begin to glow an eerie white, initiating its slow descent back into the ground.

Eruka lunges back toward the entrance to the cave, eyes wide with fear. Just before she makes it to the gaps in the spikes, they slide down as if melting, and the skull descends back into the earth, bringing Eruka with it.

The last things to disappear, lying flat against the expansive black desert, are its white eyes, which fade softly into the night.

Medusa watches the ground for a moment, the chill of apathy apparent on her face.

"A sound soul that hides in the shadows," she muses, examining her nails and turning from where the skull had been. As she begins to walk away, her cape covers her tracks. "Where will I find them, this... diamond in the rough?"

"Use the blood!" comes a squawk from her pocket, and she plucks out a winged creature from the depths of her cloak, placing it back on her shoulder. It blinks frantically, x-shaped eyes glancing around.

"I'm amazed you managed to stay quiet that entire time, Ragnarok," Medusa says lightly.

"Shut up," the bird spits, black wings bunching into little fists. "You know I'm great at staying qu-" He coughs at the peanut that has suddenly entered his mouth as Medusa ensures herself a few more seconds of silence.

"I don't know that," she counters with a smirk. "But I think you're right. Let's have the blood search the shadows for us."

As the stars twinkle overhead, another gust of wind blows across the desert, leading them back into the city, complete with its white walls, its dark academy and all of its mysteries.

Within the walls, on a rooftop, sleeps a sound Soul.

He is never a jump ahead of the bread line.

The city is bustling at this time of day, and he hates it - not only because he hates being around people in general, but because it makes his lunch that much harder to lift. Normally they wait until later, when they can scavenge the scraps, but someone he's stuck with has other plans.

"Sooouulll, I'm hungry," a black cat whines at him, tail swishing impatiently as it paces along the corner of the alleyway.

"Dude. Blair." Soul's eyes flit towards her as he leans against the wall a couple of feet into the alley. "Stop talking. You'll get your fish."

"You're grouchy today," she says as she looks around the corner.

He scowls at her. "First of all. Hanger is a real, proven phenomenon," he says, tugging his headphones off of his ears. "And I've got a hard enough time blending in without my talking cat drawing attention to me. So shuddup."

"Hmm." She sniffs. "How rude. Blair's not sharing any fish with you today."

"You have never, not once, shared your fish with me, and I wouldn't ask for it," he mutters, his head hitting the wall as he sighs.

"I wonder why you're so bad at stealing," she muses, walking back toward him and rubbing against his legs.

"Because some of us can't just walk up to the fish vendor and blink at him to get what they want," he grits out, a certain scientifically tested sensation getting the better of him.

Blair's back pulls into a defensive arch as she looks up at him.

"Oh yeah?" she says, eyes narrowing mischievously. "Fine. Wait here."

"Wait- what are you-" he starts to say, but she has already flitted out into the street, leaving him standing awkwardly in his alley. He's caught between chasing after her and keeping himself hidden, for fear that the city guards will grab ahold of him and separate him from his very annoying, but also very-only-friend-in-the-world cat.

Fear, as usual, keeps him skulking in the alley, forever doomed to the shadows.

He spends a lot of time in alleys. They're often the safest places in town, even with some of the city's shadier characters taking refuge there. There's no place for castaways or runaways in Death City, and since he himself checks both of those boxes, he slinks his way through his days, ducking the guards and scrounging up food the only way that he knows how:

… By relying on his cat, apparently.

"Time to go!" Blair yowls as she shoots past him, and it takes a second for him to realize what has happened before he jumps and sprints after her. He realizes belatedly that she has a hot dog wedged between her teeth, sticking out of the sides of her face like a pair of handlebars.

"Ugh, gross, Blair," he says as a cacophony of familiar angry sounds starts to build behind him. Blair leaps onto a dumpster at the end of the alleyway and then onto a rooftop, turning to wait for him.

He's hauling himself up onto the roof as a group of guards crowds into the alley, and adrenaline shoots through him as hears a very familiar voice yell out, "Get him!"

A hulking, hairy man with a strange red-and-white eye appears around the corner, and Soul slips down the roof a little as they lock eyes.

"Don't let him get away this time!" the man hollers. Several of his cronies sprint down the alley in front of him, headed straight for Soul, and the man is right behind them.

"Oh, come on, not this guy again," Soul grumbles as they come closer, waving their batons and yelling. Yanking himself up onto the tiles, he scrambles up onto the roof with a grunt. Behind him comes a great bang, followed by "damnit!" Out of the corner of his eye, Soul sees the hairy man frantically hopping on one foot, as the other foot has somehow encased itself in ice.

Soul is well-acquainted with the bizarrely manifesting powers of the Head of the Guard. It's a relatively new development, the result of a... strange turn of events that Soul doesn't like to dwell on.

As the dumpster begins to heave with the metallic sound of pursuit, he rips his eyes away and Soul and Blair take off along the rooftops, eyes set on their home.

"That's…" he gasps at Blair as he catches sight of the hot dog in her mouth again. "So gross."

"So underappreciated," he can hear her singsonging in front of him as they run. It's clear that he spends far too much time with her, since he can still understand what she's saying with a hot dog stuck in her face.

"Soul doesn't want fish, so Blair gets him his favorite lunch," she says. "And hooow does he repay her? By being a rude, rude boy. For shame."

"I'm sorry that cat saliva isn't a condiment I normally put on my hot dogs!" he squawks at her as they run, the sounds of the guards gradually fading into the distance behind them.

They both know that he'll eat it anyway.

As always, they manage to outrun the guards, and they make their way up to one final roof. Blair jumps up into his arms (hot dog and all) and he holds onto her as they walk up the narrow outdoor fire escape to an old, crumbling apartment complex. In a corner of the roof lies a makeshift tent, constructed out of old clothes and bed sheets, hung up on a borrowed laundry string.

"Home sweet home," he mutters as he collapses into the tent. Blair drops the hot dog in his lap unceremoniously and prances out of the tent towards her water bowl.

"Wait," he says with a start. "You didn't get fish."

"I'll get some later," she says haughtily from outside the tent. "Like you said. It's not very hard."

He rolls his eyes, but as he looks down at his hot dog, he realizes that there is something tucked into the side of the bun. As he pulls out a relish packet, he smiles a little, ripping the plastic and dumping it onto his hot dog.

"Blair knows which condiment you normally put on your hot dogs," she sniffs at him as she reenters the tent and curls up into a grouchy ball.

Soul lets out a sigh. "Yeah, she does," he agrees. Her grouchiness remains, illustrated in the irritated twitch of her tail, so he chews his hot dog in silence. After a moment, he leans over and flips open the side of the tent, flooding the space with light and revealing their usual view.

Its presence is as imposing as ever. From their spot atop the apartment complex, their entire view is taken up by a massive castle-like structure, skull eyes boring into them from beyond the towering walls that stretch around the school.

"Hey, Blair," Soul says after a minute. "Do you know what today is?"

"What?"

"It's… been six months today."

Blair makes a sort of purring-yowl sound and rolls over to look at him, black-purply belly exposed. "Since we became friends?"

He chuckles. "Are we friends? I thought I just let you stay in my swanky apartment rent-free."

She rolls her eyes. "Yeah, we're really in the lap of luxury here."

He almost laughs, but this is his luxury now, despite what he has left behind. "But yeah, it's been six months since… since you saved me."

She looks up at him again, irritation dissipating with the breeze that blows through the tent flaps.

"I was just getting you lunch," she says, but she walks over and butts her head against his hand. "Like I always do."

He scratches behind her ears with a grin, and she curls up in his lap while the two of them gaze up at the building.

"Wouldn't be so bad to live up there instead, would it?" he murmurs, and Blair looks up at him, familiar with this particular monologue.

"Sorry, kitten," she says, sinking her claws into his leg and making him wince. "Maybe someday, if you sprout a jetpack or something, you can fly over there and be useful."

"Yeah," he says, watching the sunset sink beneath the school. "That's... never gonna happen."

"Maka? Are you in there? Sweetheart?"

Maka stands beside the door, back to the wall, trying very hard to emulate what it sounds like to not be in here. She waits for footsteps to echo their way down the hallway, and when they do, she slips out the door, trying her best to silently navigate the hallway in combat boots. Tiptoeing through rooms with vast ceilings and marble floors is not an easy feat, but she makes her way down the outside stairs and into the front courtyard before the doors behind her burst open.

"Makaaaaaa! There you are! Papa's been looking for you!"

She scrunches her face up before turning around, but she quickly settles into her Slightly Less Irritated expression, which will hopefully keep her from unleashing her anger on her father before eleven in the morning.

"Hey, Papa," she says, resigned.

"I've brought five weapons in today, sweetheart!" he says, throwing his arms wide as he descends the stairs. "Let's give 'em the old college try! Sound okay?"

"Not in college yet, Papa," she grits out, though he's the one reminding her of this every five minutes, so he should really know better. He starts laughing nervously, which is what he does when he's already done something that she wouldn't like. Already suspicious, she fixes him with a steely glare and waits.

"Well… Papa's hoping you'll say yes, because he's already cleared your entire schedule for the afternoon to make room!"

"You what?" she says, voice deadly and dangerous, and he jumps a little. "You know today's my fullest day of class, Papa!"

"I know, but it was the only time they could come," he says a little desperately, pleading at her with his eyes. "And there's only so much ti-"

"Stop," she says, cutting him off. She starts to walk back up the stairs into her bedroom, hot Nevada sun fueling her anger.

"There's only-"

"Yes," she says emphatically, turning around on the stairs and balling her fists as she looks down at him. "I know how it goes. If meisters don't find a weapon partner by their eighteenth birthday, or vice versa, we lose our abilities. We're out. You toss us into the streets. And it looks bad if the mayor's daughter can't find a weapon. I get it."

She sees his face fall, and she sighs, walking back down the stairs to where he stands, gazing at the ground.

"Papa, I… I know this isn't your fault. And I know you're trying really hard for me. But…" She looks up at him, determination glistening in her eyes. "I'm not going to settle. I want to find… somebody special. Someone who I can trust."

Her father looks down at her, red hair spilling into her face as he pulls her into a hug. "I know, baby girl. But we have to keep trying, you know?"

She sighs against his shoulder. "Yeah, I know."

"...So you'll go see them?"

She groans a little. "Yeah, I will."

He throws himself into the air with joy, legs lifting toward the sky. Maka follows behind him, already very sure of what's about to transpire.

All five of them are awful.

"Nope," Maka says after an hour of trying to wield them all. When the last weapon she's supposed to be meeting with says something like "it's cute that you think you can call the shots, sweetheart," it's the final straw.

"You should do something about your daughter, Spirit," one of the other weapons mutters to her father, and Maka turns around to face him, seething.

"What did you say?" she says.

Spirit is looking back and forth between Maka and all of the weapons nervously and, with a final pleading glance at her, he starts to flutter his way over to them, putting on his most appeasing expression.

She can see which side he's chosen, so she turns tail and stalks out of the room, absolutely livid, absolutely needing to get out of this place, out of the world she's feeling forced both into and out of at the same time.

If nobody wants her here, she'll make an early exit. She won't wait around for someone to throw her out.

She heads to her room, puts together a bag, and makes a plan.